Ohio’s statewide primaries Tuesday will determine party nominees for top elected offices, with several races viewed as early stepping stones into the general-election contests that will affect the last two years of President Donald Trump’s presidency, the Associated Press reported. Many candidates are also preparing for November even as voters cast ballots in the current contests.
In the governor race to replace outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, tech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is seeking the Republican nomination against auto racing engineer and internet personality Casey Putsch, according to AP’s decision notes. AP said a third candidate, Heather Hill, was disqualified after her running mate withdrew from the ticket in an acrimonious split; AP also noted that Hill and her running mate’s names would still appear on the ballot but that votes cast for them would not be counted.
On the Democratic side, AP said Dr. Amy Acton is unopposed for the nomination. AP described Acton as the former director of the Ohio Department of Health during the early days of the state’s COVID-19 pandemic response until her resignation in June 2020.
AP said Ramaswamy’s Republican campaign enters the final stretch with endorsements from Trump and the Ohio Republican Party and a $31 million war chest, including $25 million from his personal funds. By contrast, AP said Putsch raised about $123,000 and had about $8,700 in his campaign account as of the most recent filing in April.
For the U.S. Senate, AP said Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown is running to reclaim his old seat in Washington and faces Ron Kincaid for the Democratic nomination. AP said Brown had an enormous fundraising advantage over Kincaid as of mid-April, and AP added that a Brown victory in November would be pivotal to Democratic hopes of winning Senate control, as it was in 2024 when Brown lost to Republican Bernie Moreno and that defeat helped secure a GOP majority.
On the Republican side, AP said the Senate seat’s nominee is Sen. Jon Husted, who faces no primary challengers. AP said Husted was lieutenant governor when he was appointed to fill the Senate seat that JD Vance vacated to become vice president, and AP said the seat will be up again for a full term in 2028.
The Associated Press also laid out what it will monitor in the U.S. House races, including Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, where AP said a crowded Republican field is vying to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur. AP said Kaptur, a 22-term incumbent, narrowly won reelection in 2024 over Republican Derek Merrin in one of the last races to be called that cycle; this time, AP said Merrin is running for the GOP nomination against a field that includes former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, state Rep. Josh Williams and two others.
AP said Lucas County, home to Toledo, is by far the most influential in the 9th District Republican primaries, contributing more than one-third of the total vote in the 2024 GOP U.S. House primary. AP said Merrin and Williams are from Lucas County, while Sheahan’s home base is Ottawa County, and it also identified Franklin and Cuyahoga counties—home to Columbus and Cleveland—as the state’s most populous and key to both Democratic and Republican statewide primaries, along with Hamilton, Montgomery and Summit counties.
AP said it expects Trump’s endorsement to boost Ramaswamy, noting that Trump carried every county in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. AP also described its approach to election calls, saying it does not make projections and will declare winners only when it determines there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap; if a race has not been called, AP said it will continue covering newsworthy developments such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory while making clear that it has not yet declared a winner.
On election administration details, AP said polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET and that any registered voter in Ohio may participate in any party’s primary, with voters who take part in a party’s primary treated as affiliated with that party. AP said Ohio had about 7.9 million registered voters as of Friday and that the 2022 Republican primaries for the U.S. Senate and governor each had about 1.1 million total votes cast, roughly 14% of registered voters at the time; AP also said the Democratic U.S. Senate primary had about 518,000 total votes cast and the Democratic gubernatorial primary had about 509,000.
AP added that about 17% of the vote in the 2022 primaries was cast before primary day and that about 25% of the vote was cast before primary day in the 2024 presidential primary. AP said that as of Friday, more than 153,000 Democratic primary ballots and about 122,000 Republican primary ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election, and it said all 88 counties in Ohio tend to release early and absentee results in the first vote update of the night, in most cases before any in-person Election Day results are released.
Finally, AP said vote-counting can move quickly, pointing to the 2024 Ohio presidential primary when AP first reported results at 7:36 p.m. ET, about six minutes after polls closed, with about 90% of the vote counted by 10:19 p.m. ET and more than 99% counted by the last update at 1:28 a.m. ET. AP said that as of Tuesday there would be 182 days until the 2026 midterm elections.