A new poll of likely November 2026 Ohio voters shows Democrat Amy Acton leading Republican Vivek Ramaswamy by 10 percentage points in the race for governor — a striking reversal from just six months ago, when Ramaswamy held a double-digit lead of his own.
The survey, conducted by EMC Research from Feb. 10 to Feb. 22, found Acton leading 53% to 43% among 1,343 likely November 2026 voters, with a margin of error of ±2.7 percentage points. Newsweek was among the first outlets to report on the results.
The result is the latest indicator of a race that has moved sharply in Acton’s direction. In August 2025, an Emerson College poll had Ramaswamy up by 10 points — 49% to Acton’s 39%. By December, that same pollster found the race statistically tied, with Acton at 46% and Ramaswamy at 45%. The new February numbers represent an additional lurch in Acton’s favor, driven in part by what analysts and polling data suggest are several compounding vulnerabilities for the Republican front-runner.
Ramaswamy struggling with his own party
Perhaps the most telling number in the new poll is among Republican voters: Ramaswamy is drawing only 65% support from his own base. Acton, by contrast, has consolidated 82% of Democratic voters. Independent voters are breaking 51%-46% for the Democrat.
That weak Republican number tracks with what political observers have noted throughout the campaign. Despite holding the endorsement of President Donald Trump and the Ohio Republican Party — which made an unusually early endorsement of Ramaswamy last spring — the candidate has faced persistent skepticism within GOP ranks.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who is term-limited and cannot run again, worked behind the scenes to block the party’s early endorsement of Ramaswamy, according to reporting by NBC News. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who eventually suspended his own gubernatorial campaign after the party coalesced around Ramaswamy, was previously blunt in his criticism. “Mr. Ramaswamy quit on President Trump and DOGE on day one, he quit on Ohio and moved his company to Texas, and he quit his presidential campaign after a devastating fourth-place finish in Iowa,” Yost said when Ramaswamy entered the race.
The Texas problem
That “moved his company to Texas” line has not gone away. Ramaswamy founded Strive Asset Management in Columbus, but the firm relocated to Dallas in November 2024, before he announced his gubernatorial bid. Ramaswamy has said the move was made by the new CEO after a merger and that it actually motivated him to run for governor — “to make Ohio more competitive than Texas.” But Democrats have seized on the optics, framing him as an absentee billionaire with no real stake in the state’s economic future.
“It’s really difficult for a billionaire who has spent $1 million of his own money on a private jet on the campaign to win the argument that he understands what people are going through,” one Democratic strategist told NOTUS.
Favorability and the outsider problem
Ramaswamy enters the general election with a 40% approval rating and a 41% disapproval rating — essentially upside down — according to earlier polling reported by NOTUS. Acton’s favorability numbers sit in the 30s, but she also carries far less name recognition, which analysts say gives her more room to grow.
Republican primary challenger Casey Putsch, a Northwest Ohio business owner, has made the outsider critique central to his campaign. “He clearly doesn’t care about the people of Ohio or America,” Putsch told the Ohio Capital Journal. “It’s kind of a globalist corporate billionaire interest.”
Ramaswamy has also been dealing with a persistent far-right harassment campaign on social media — a problem that drew enough attention that he publicly addressed it earlier this year, calling on his supporters to reject racism and bigotry. His accounts have faced an ongoing stream of slurs from accounts associated with segments of the far-right, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
The Nazi reenactor donation
TiffinOhio.net previously reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign accepted a $500 donation on Aug. 15 from Richard Iott, a former northwest Ohio Republican congressional candidate whose 2010 House campaign collapsed after photographs emerged of him wearing a Nazi SS Waffen uniform. Iott participated in reenactments of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, a unit linked to the genocide of Hungarian Jews, and previously told The Atlantic that Nazi Germany “accomplished incredible things” from a military standpoint. As of late February, Ramaswamy’s campaign had issued no statement on the donation and had not indicated plans to return the funds.
A tax plan with big questions
Ramaswamy has centered his campaign on eliminating Ohio’s personal income tax, pitching the policy as an economic engine that would drive business back to the state. A February 2026 report from Innovation Ohio found that the proposal would create a nearly $10 billion hole in the state budget — roughly 21% of the General Revenue Fund. The analysis concluded the plan would require either a 20% increase in property taxes or a 65% hike in sales taxes to offset the lost revenue, and would trigger cuts to Medicaid, public schools, and local services including police and fire departments. Innovation Ohio noted that Kansas attempted a similar approach in 2012; the Republican-controlled legislature reversed the cuts years later after the state saw slower population growth, education funding reductions, and multiple credit rating downgrades.
Acton’s path
Acton, a physician who served as Ohio Department of Health director under DeWine, has leaned heavily on her biography — raised in Youngstown, a working-class background she contrasts directly with Ramaswamy’s billionaire profile. She raised $5 million in 2025, a record for a Democratic gubernatorial nominee in an off-year election, though Ramaswamy’s $19.8 million haul dwarfs that figure.
Women voters have been a key factor in Acton’s rise. In August, women were split nearly evenly between the two candidates. By December, women had shifted toward Acton, breaking for her 56% to 37%, according to Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball. The February numbers suggest that shift has continued.
The historical hill
Despite Acton’s lead, the structural math in Ohio still favors Republicans. Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in Ohio since Ted Strickland’s 2006 victory. The Ohio Republican Party controls the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, a legislative supermajority, and nearly every seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.
Still, the trend line in polling is difficult for Ramaswamy’s campaign to dismiss. A 20-point swing in the head-to-head matchup — from Ramaswamy +10 to Acton +10 — over a six-month stretch is a significant shift for a race still eight months from Election Day.
The May 5 primary is the next major milestone. Ramaswamy is expected to win the Republican nomination. Acton faces no significant Democratic opposition.
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