Ohio Senate (Special) 2026Toss-up
Sherrod Brown (D) vs. Jon Husted (R)
Precision Combined forecast
65%
Sherrod Brown (D) to win Ohio's Senate seat
- Sherrod Brown (D)
- 64.9% · −185
- Jon Husted (R)
- 35.1% · +185
- Sources used
- 3 of 5
- Market money behind it
- $1.2M
As of Oct 13, 6:02 AM ET · refreshes about every 30 minutes
Kalshi
not usedNo market listed
Polymarket
44% weight- Sherrod Brown61.5%
- Jon Husted39.5% ▲0.5
$1.2M traded, 1¢ spread
PredictIt
11% weight- Democratic62¢
- Republican39¢ ▼1
PredictIt publishes no volume, 1¢ spread
Public polls
45% weightD +3.1
Sherrod Brown 46.9% · Jon Husted 43.8%
7 pollsters · latest ended Oct 6, 2026
7 pollsters, latest ended Oct 6, 2 with a partisan sponsor (half credit)
Precision member poll
not usedNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
RealClearPolitics
for comparisonRCP doesn’t license its polling averages, so we link to them instead of copying the number.
Compare on RealClearPolling ↗How the Precision Funnel™ weighed this race
Market money behind the number: $1.2M
- 45%Public polls7 pollsters, latest ended Oct 6, 2 with a partisan sponsor (half credit)
- 44%Polymarket$1.2M traded, 1¢ spread
- 11%PredictItPredictIt publishes no volume, 1¢ spread
- —KalshiNo market listed
- —Precision member pollNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
- —Attention: news volume, news tone, Wikipedia pageviewsClosed: only Wikipedia has enough volume; the gate needs two independent sources. 0% unless the gate opens; 5% to 15% when it does. Signals ↓
Weight = trust × evidence for this race, scaled to 100% across the sources used. The rule ↓
Attention and momentum
Gate closedNo clear movement in news coverage or public interest between Sherrod Brown and Jon Husted. It is shown here and not blended into the number. Gate closed: only Wikipedia has enough volume; the gate needs two independent sources.
News volume36% of bucket
—
Not enough days of data yet
News tone29% of bucket
—
Not enough days of coverage to score tone
Wikipedia pageviews36% of bucket
+0.00
7.5k views/day last week; Brown's share 54% → 54%
No news articles a day stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
No average news tone stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: Wikipedia.
● Sherrod BrownGDELT seriesWikipedia article● Jon HustedGDELT seriesWikipedia article
Not measured yet: search interest (15%) and social volume and sentiment (15%). Their share is spread over the measured signals until they are wired. News tone is the tone of coverage, not of voters. The gate rule →
Recent public polls
Brown 45 · Husted 46
Oct 5 – Oct 6, 2026 · 925 LV
Brown 43 · Husted 44 · Levy 3
Oct 5 – Oct 6, 2026 · 925 LV
Brown 49 · Husted 43
Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2026 · 760 LV
Brown 44 · Husted 43 · Redpath 4
Sep 28 – Sep 29, 2026 · 1200 LV
Brown 46.3 · Husted 42.6
Sep 26 – Sep 27, 2026 · 680 LV
Brown 51 · Husted 43
Sep 24 – Sep 27, 2026 · 1298 RV
Brown 47.8 · Husted 47.3
Sep 21 – Sep 23, 2026 · 695 LV
Brown 45 · Husted 42
Sep 14 – Sep 16, 2026 · 1085 LV
Brown 47.3 · Husted 41.9
Sep 8 – Sep 9, 2026 · 1200 LV
Brown 48 · Husted 44
Aug 11 – Aug 13, 2026 · 800 LV
Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research
Brown 53 · Husted 45
Aug 6 – Aug 10, 2026 · 1008 RV
The New York Times/Siena University
Husted 50 · Brown 47
Jun 15 – Jun 28, 2026 · 601 LV
Brown 48 · Husted 45
Jun 14 – Jun 16, 2026 · 800 LV
How the Precision Funnel™ builds the Precision Combined number
Everything available on a race goes into the top of the funnel. No source has a fixed percentage: each one’s weight comes from how much evidence it carries for this race, by the published rule on the right.
- Public polls. Every public poll of the race, national, state or local, is vetted before it counts: how many people it reached, how recent it is, whether it screened for likely voters, and whether a party or campaign paid for it. Campaign internal polls are left out.
- Prediction markets, priced by money at risk. For each market we add up the dollars traded (contracts times price). A market with under $10k traded, a spread wider than 10¢, or a 15-point jump on under $25k is left out, because one buyer can set that price.
- Local and regional sources. Newspaper, radio and university polls get the same vetting as step 1. Today they arrive through the public poll feed; we are adding the local sources national feeds miss. In races national pollsters skip, such as state cabinet offices, they may be most of what exists.
- Attention and momentum. News volume and tone (GDELT) and Wikipedia pageviews for the two leading candidates, this week against the three weeks before. Attention is not votes, so it counts only through a gate: two independent sources with enough volume, all moving the same way. Then it carries 5% to 15% of the number; otherwise 0%, shown beside the number. Search interest and social platforms join as they are wired.
- our own member poll. Our panel, weighted to the voter file on party, age, sex, education, income and region. It starts with the same trust as outside polls and earns more only through a scored track record.Not live yet
- The number. Market prices are scaled to add to 100%, a poll lead becomes a win chance with a bell curve 6 points wide, and the sources are averaged with their weights. Every race page prints the weights it got and why.
Full methodology →Why blend? Read the research →How we’ll be scored →
The weighting rule
Weight = trust × evidence, then scaled so the sources used add to 100%.
| Source | Trust | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Kalshi, Polymarket | 1 | Dollars traded ÷ (dollars traded + $50k). $50k counts half, $1M about 95%. |
| PredictIt | ½ | Fixed at ½, since PredictIt publishes no volume and caps each contract at $850. |
| Public polls | 1 | Grows with each vetted poll: full credit at 600 respondents, half credit every 21 days of age, less for registered voters or all adults, half for a partisan sponsor. |
| Precision member poll | 1 | Effective sample ÷ 800 (max 1) × share of demographic groups that match the voter file. Left out under 200 respondents. |
So a Senate race with deep markets and many polls lands near an even split, while a race no market lists and only one local paper polled leans almost entirely on the polls that exist. The constants above are the same for every race; changing one is a new method version, dated and logged. Trust values will be refit on our own scored history and the change published. RealClearPolitics is linked for comparison but not used: RCP has no public data feed and its terms don’t allow republishing its averages. Market prices reflect traders’ money, not a poll of voters. PredictIt data is shown under its non-commercial license. The Funnel never uses a number we did not measure or a source we cannot name.