Ohio Poll: Ramaswamy Commanding Early Lead in Gubernatorial Race

Vivek Ramaswamy rose to prominence during the 2024 presidential election, evolving from an entrepreneur and writer on diversity, equity, and inclusion and wokeness to one of the most recognizable figures in Republican politics through his presidential run. Though his White House bid fell short, recent polls show he enters the 2026 Ohio governor’s race as a strong favorite.

The latest poll from Emerson College Polling found that Ramaswamy led in potential head-to-head matchups between him and Tim Ryan and Amy Acton. Against Ryan, Ramaswamy led by eight points, 49% to 41%, and against Acton, he led 49% to 39%.

Such early polls should usually be taken with skepticism, because factors like name recognition can aid candidates who are more well-known early on, but do not necessarily represent how the electorate will feel on Election Day.

However, in the case of Tim Ryan, Ramaswamy’s popularity is unlikely to give him a significant boost. This is because Ryan has previously run for Senate in Ohio against Vance in 2022, and before that for president in 2020, though he dropped out after only receiving 1% of the vote in some polls. Due to his previous runs, only 13.2% of respondents say they had not heard of him, similar to the 10.7% who said the same of Ramaswamy. Ryan has not yet announced whether he will run for governor, but has said he will make the final decision by Sept. 30.

Amy Acton, on the other hand, does have a slight name recognition deficit, likely contributing to the greater discrepancy between her and Ramaswamy. A larger percentage, 24.7%, indicated in the poll that they had never heard of Acton. Her previous experience in Ohio politics was as director of the Ohio Department of Health from 2019 to 2020, where she, along with Governor Mike DeWine, was the first in the nation to close schools. Amid protests about her lockdown policy, she resigned as director on June 11, 2020, and left her position as adviser to the DeWine administration in August 2020.

The poll also asked about the 2026 Senate race. Since Vance resigned from his position as senator to become vice president, DeWine appointed Jon Husted to replace him, with a special election in 2026 to fill the seat. The poll found that Husted led Sherrod Brown, who served as senator from Ohio from 2007 until he was defeated in 2024, by six points. In this case, the name recognition advantage was on Brown’s side, with only 3.2% of respondents unfamiliar with him compared with 13.5% who said they had not heard of Husted, meaning that Husted’s advantage could even grow as his familiarity increases with the people of Ohio.

These large leads for Republicans in Senate and gubernatorial races are only a recent phenomenon in Ohio. Even in 2024, Bernie Moreno only won the Senate seat by 3.5 points against Brown, despite Trump winning the state by 11.2 points. In 2018, after Trump won the state by several points in 2016, Brown won reelection by 6.4 points. However, now that Republicans hold both Senate seats and the governor’s office, as well as the transformation of the state’s electoral politics under Trump and Vance, future Democratic wins are becoming increasingly unlikely.