A Republican district in Ohio has shifted 20 points to the Democrats in the state’s latest special election.
Republican state Senator Michael Rulli defeated Democrat Michael Kripchak to win the election held in eastern Ohio’s 6th District on Tuesday to fill a vacancy left by Bill Johnson, who resigned in January after 13 years in Congress to become president of Youngstown State University.
While Rulli was able to win by nearly 10 percentage points, with 54.7 percent of the vote to Kripchak’s 45.3 percent, the results mark a notable decline in GOP support the Ohio district compared to previous elections. Johnson won his last four elections by more than 30 percentage points.
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, won the former battleground state by 8 points in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Newsweek contacted the Ohio Republican Party by email outside of normal business hours to comment on this story.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, political analyst Dave Wasserman attributed the close result to “abysmal” voter turnout.
Meanwhile, reacting to the result, Rulli said: “We knew the polls were going to be close, and the guy I ran against really worked. He’s a really hard worker. But this is a blue-collar district, this is Bruce Springsteen, the forgotten man, ‘Joe Bag of Donuts.’ They don’t trust the Democrats and Republicans, and they look at the individual. And I’m really good at retail politics.”
Kripchak told the Associated Press that the results had “not diminished our spirit.”
“Though historically a red district, our campaign outperformed expectations, proving the doubters wrong.”
Despite the result showing a decline in GOP support, Rulli’s election has increased the GOP’s slim majority in the House of Representatives. The party will now hold 219 seats to the Democrat’s 213.
According to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Trump is poised to win the state in the presidential election as he sits at 46.1 percent compared to Democratic incumbent Joe Biden’s 36.8 percent.
Rulli and Kripchack will face off again in November’s elections to compete for the full two-year term that will begin in January.
Speaking to Newsweek, Todd Landman, a professor of political science at Nottingham University in the U.K., said the results showed “the November race might be tighter than expected.”
He said: “The Ohio special election was somewhat unusual since the seat has been vacant for some time and Rulli will have to run again in November, so will he be in the House for a short period during which he will need to campaign. His election does increase the GOP hold on the House, but the advance of Democrats in Ohio means the November race may be tighter than expected in a strong Republican area.”
“It is likely that turnout will be higher in November, so both parties will need to have strong campaigns, which will be affected by the Presidential campaign efforts in the wake of the convictions of Mr. Trump and Hunter Biden.”
