副总统万斯上周回到他出生的俄亥俄州，举行集会并提前投票。对全国政治媒体的许多人来说，他所在党在这些参议院和州长选举中竟然如此艰难，这确实令人惊讶。但他们不该如此惊讶。关键在于，万斯为了成为特朗普总统的副手而放弃的参议院席位。去年，当时担任俄亥俄州副州长的共和党人约翰·赫斯特被任命填补该席位。
Vice President Vance went back to his native Ohio last week to hold a rally and cast his early ballot in what have been — at least to many in the national political press — surprisingly difficult Senate and gubernatorial races for his party. They shouldn’t be so surprised. The big-ticket item is the Senate seat Vance gave up to become President Trump’s number two. Republican Jon Husted, then serving as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, was appointed to the seat last year.
赫斯特是个稳妥的选择：他是一位政治老兵，曾担任俄亥俄州众议院议长，并在2010年和2014年担任州务卿期间赢得全州范围的选举，之后在2018年参加州长竞选。他虽然在初选中失利，但加入了胜者迈克·德怀恩的竞选名单，两次担任其竞选伙伴表现非常出色。赫斯特在许多方面与他接替的参议员形成鲜明对比。在哥伦布和华盛顿，赫斯特被视为党的忠诚者、顽强的竞选者、政治专业人士以及某种程度上的交易者。
Husted was a sturdy choice: a political workhorse who had served as the Speaker of the Ohio House and won statewide elections in 2010 and 2014 as secretary of state before running for governor in 2018. He lost the primary but joined the ticket of the winner, Mike DeWine, for two very successful outings as his running mate. Husted is in many ways the opposite of the man he replaced in the Senate. Husted is seen in both Columbus and Washington as a party loyalist, a dogged campaigner, a political professional and something of a dealmaker.
他某种程度上是典型的俄亥俄州共和党人，其团队中掺杂着约翰·博纳的旧部，以此证明这一点。如果今年是俄亥俄州普遍共和党人表现良好的一年，赫斯特将是最合适的人选。但事实并非如此——在俄亥俄州做共和党人并不好，或者说在特朗普在2024年以不到15个百分点获胜的几乎所有地方做共和党人也不容易。那一年，赫斯特的民主党挑战者谢罗德·布朗在俄亥俄州的另一个参议院席位上输给了共和党伯尼·莫雷诺。
He’s sort of the archetypal Ohio Republican, with a team peppered with John Boehner alums to prove it. If this were a good year to be a generic Republican in Ohio, Husted would be the man for the job. But it isn’t a good year to be a Republican in Ohio — or pretty much any place that President Trump won by less than 15 points in 2024. That was the year that Husted’s Democratic challenger, Sherrod Brown, lost the Buckeye State’s other Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno, who, like Vance, ran as a mega-MAGA outsider and then rode Trump’s coattails to beat Brown by a little less than 4 points.
莫雷诺就像万斯一样，以超级MAGA局外人身份参选，随后乘着特朗普的东风，以不到4个百分点的优势击败布朗。布朗长期强调自己是卷起袖子的普通人形象，实际上很像赫斯特的民主党版本：在州议会任职时间长，曾两次担任俄亥俄州务卿，并且缴纳了大量党费。在克林顿和奥巴马时期，当时俄亥俄州民主党形势较好，布朗本来理应成为看似永久在任的现任议员。
Brown, who has long emphasized his shirt-sleeved, everyman persona, is actually a lot like a Democratic version of Husted: lengthy statehouse tenure, two terms as Ohio secretary of state and lots of party dues paying. And in the Clinton and Obama eras when times were better for Ohio Democrats, Brown was ideally situated to become what seemed to be a permanent incumbent.
他参加的前三次参议院竞选——2006年、2012年和2018年——都是俄亥俄州民主党的好年份。但在2024年，特朗普以自里根以来任何总统候选人中最大的优势赢得了俄亥俄州，布朗未能守住阵地。就像今年一样，我们在2024年也未能从俄亥俄州获得大量高质量的民意调查。但我们看到的调查显示，布朗起初领先，但在秋季支持率下降。
His first three Senate runs — 2006, 2012 and 2018 — were all good years for Ohio Democrats. But in 2024, when Trump won Ohio by the widest margin of any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, Brown couldn’t hold on. Like this year, we didn’t get much high-quality polling out of Ohio in 2024. But the surveys we did see showed Brown starting with a lead that faded in the fall.
他在9月底领先4个百分点，10月份与对手持平，最终在选举前几天落后。布朗仍然表现优于当时的副总统卡马拉·哈里斯——民主党总统候选人，但仅领先3个百分点。共和党人关于俄亥俄州政治的理论是，2024年的选举，更重要的是2022年的中期选举——当时万斯赢得了赫斯特德如今试图捍卫的席位——证明俄亥俄州不再是带有红色 tint 的摇摆州，而是一个鲜红的州。
He was up 4 points at the end of September, tied in October and, finally, falling behind in the days just before the election. Brown still outperformed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, but only by a measly 3 points. The Republicans’ theory of Ohio politics is that the 2024 election and, even more so, the 2022 midterm in which Vance won the seat Husted is now trying to defend, prove that Ohio is no longer a red-tinted swing state but rather a bright red one.
2022年，万斯是一个有争议、两极分化的人物，从未担任过选举职务，但仍以6个百分点的优势击败了资深民主党众议员蒂姆·瑞安。民主党的理论是，俄亥俄州仍然具有很高的政治弹性，而该州大量的白人工人阶级选民一直与共和党保持着一种便利的婚姻关系。民主党策略人士认为，由于俄亥俄州拥有大量老年选民、北部众多的罗马天主教选民以及南部广阔的阿巴拉契亚地区，该州的选民更倾向于根据价值观投票，而不是根据钱包投票。
In 2022, Vance was a controversial, polarizing figure who had never held elective office and still managed to beat longtime Democratic congressman Tim Ryan by 6 points. The Democratic theory is that Ohio remains very politically elastic and that the large number of white, working-class voters in the state have been in a marriage of convenience with the Republican Party. Democratic strategists believe that with lots of older voters, a large number of Roman Catholic voters in the north and a big swath of Appalachia in the south, Ohio has been voting its values more than its pocketbook. (It’s not by accident that Husted’s campaign and its allies have focused so much on transgender issues.)
（赫斯特德的竞选团队及其盟友之所以如此聚焦于跨性别议题，并非偶然。）像布朗这样的民主党人认为，特朗普和万斯之类的候选人能够在俄亥俄州成功的原因在于，他们以一种进步民主党尚未能够匹敌的方式融合了经济和文化民粹主义。布朗在2006年击败的现任共和党参议员德怀恩——他成功进入参议院的对手——属于老派的全线保守主义模式。
Democrats like Brown hold that the reason candidates like Trump and Vance have succeeded in Ohio is that they fuse economic and cultural populism in a way that progressive Democrats haven’t been able to match. The incumbent Republican Brown beat to get into the Senate in 2006, DeWine, is of the old down-the-line conservative model.
德温现任任期届满的州长，历来是州职位的强势得票者，2022年其得票率领先万斯10个百分点。德温的成功既戳穿了MAGA的观点，也戳穿了民主党的观点，但确实有理由认为俄亥俄是一个在工作上倾向民主党、在家庭上倾向共和党的州。在这种观点下，布朗今年非常适合卷土重来，因为2026年选民的压倒性焦点是经济问题，就像20年前他趟能源价格高企、中东战争不受欢迎之际击败德温时一样。
DeWine, now the term-limited governor, has been a stellar vote-getter for state office, running 10 points ahead of Vance in 2022. DeWine’s success pokes holes in both the MAGA and Democratic views, but there’s certainly something to the idea of Ohio as a state that wants to be Democratic at work and Republican at home. Under that view, Brown is ideally situated for a comeback this year since the overwhelming focus of voters in 2026 is economic, just like 20 years ago when he unseated DeWine amid a period of high energy prices and an unpopular Middle Eastern war.
而且与他在2024年的失利不同，这一次是布朗在赢得支持。从可怜的稀少高质量民调中挑选，我们可以看到布朗今年夏天一度落后，随后反超领先。自六月以来，没有任何合法民调显示赫斯特德领先。而两项最近的高质量民调将布朗的得票率定为49%，表明并不存在一些未决定的选民群体，它们将涌入并推动赫斯特德赢得大胜。
And unlike in his 2024 loss, this time it’s been Brown who has been gaining ground. Picking from the sadly sparse selection of high-quality polls, we can see Brown trailing this summer before moving into the lead. Since June, no legitimate poll has shown Husted leading. And two recent high-quality surveys have put Brown at 49 percent of the vote, suggesting that there isn’t some trove of undecided voters that is going to sweep in and propel Husted to a big win.
这当然不是说这已经是板上钉钉的事。远非如此。我们没有足够的高质量民调来为此次竞选做出有用的平均值，但赫斯特德几乎肯定会表现得好于他最近的民调。如今俄亥俄州全州共和党候选人的底线似乎是大约47%的得票率，这当然足够接近，以便在任何后期周期的势头变化中占据有利位置。当然，万斯不是唯一一个提前投票的人。
That’s not to say that this is a done deal. Hardly. We don’t have enough good polls to do a useful average for this race, but Husted will almost certainly outperform his recent polls. The floor for a statewide Republican in Ohio these days seems to be something like 47 percent of the vote, which is certainly close enough to be well positioned for any late-cycle momentum shifts. Of course, Vance isn’t the only one casting an early ballot.
俄亥俄在过去两次中期选举中都创造了提前投票的新纪录。2022年提前投票占总票数的约35%，而虽然大多数提前投票者早已确定他们的偏好，但后期决定者正在快速加入讨论。俄亥俄作为新兴工人阶级共和党党魁万斯式心脏地带的前提正处于考验之中，因此MAGA最好赶紧行动。
Ohio has set new records for preelection voting in both of its past two midterms. It was about 35 percent of the vote in 2022, and while most early voters are long-determined in their preferences, the late deciders are rapidly entering the chat. The premise of Ohio as the Vance-ian heartland of the new working-class Republican Party is on the line, so MAGA had better hurry.