Ohio Early Voting: Hamilton Leans Democratic, Its Suburbs Republican

Butler, Warren, and Clermont counties had returned 35,508 early ballots through Oct. 15, more than Hamilton County’s roughly 32,350.

Republican-affiliated voters lead in the suburbs, and Democratic-affiliated voters lead in Hamilton.

Statewide, Ohio early voting still leans Democratic, but that lead narrowed this week as mail ballots arrived. The Cincinnati Exchange pulled the Secretary of State’s dashboard, the office’s 2022 releases and the Hamilton County Board of Elections’ daily reports to measure what changed. For dates and hours, see the Exchange’s election voter guide.

Hamilton County Early Voting and Its Suburbs

The state’s data dashboard tags each early ballot with the party primary the voter last pulled. That is a record of past primaries, not of anyone’s choice on Nov. 3. By that measure, Republican-affiliated voters outnumber Democratic-affiliated voters in all three suburban counties, the Exchange found by filtering the dashboard on Oct. 17. Together, Butler, Warren and Clermont had returned 35,508 ballots through Thursday, Oct. 15, and Republicans led Democrats there by 3,800. The dashboard counts 32,343 for Hamilton. The county board’s own report, which the Hamilton party figures below use, counts 32,364 as of 7 p.m. Thursday.

Inside Hamilton County, the board posts an in-office report by day and party. Through Thursday, 19,127 people had voted in person at the Norwood office: 10,029 Democrats, 2,725 Republicans, 6,343 unaffiliated voters and 30 Libertarians. Democrats made up 52.4%, down from 55.9% in the first four days. Daily turnout has held between 2,112 and 2,607. After the same eight days in 2022, director Sherry Poland told WKRC that “more than 6,200 people have already voted in-person.” This year’s count runs about three times that. WLWT, citing the same board, put the first four days at 9,482 this year against 3,616 in 2022.

The board’s party report shows the lopsided margin belongs to the Norwood counter, not the mailbox. Subtracting in-office votes from the 63,390 ballots issued countywide leaves 44,263 mail ballots, by Exchange calculation. Republicans requested 18.2% of them, against 14.2% of in-office voters. Democrats requested 21.6%, against 52.4% in person. Unaffiliated voters requested 60%. Geography splits the county too. Inside Cincinnati, Democratic-affiliated voters accounted for 54.1% of the 11,889 ballots returned through Thursday. Outside the city, their share was 36.0%, and the Republican-affiliated share was 22.6%.

The suburbs also show Ohio early voting running well ahead of four years ago. Warren County had 3,595 in-person votes after eight days in 2022, Brian Sleeth of the county’s board told WKRC. This year it stands at 8,980.

What the Ohio Early Voting Numbers Show

Statewide, the dashboard, updated Oct. 16, counted 452,210 early votes through Thursday. In-person voters cast 310,289 of them, and 141,921 came back by mail. Counties had issued 664,882 mail ballots, so 522,961 remained out. The dashboard’s “all ballots issued” figure of 975,171 adds the in-person ballots, which it logs as issued and returned at once.

The dashboard counted 168,358 Democratic-affiliated ballots, 126,540 Republican and 151,971 unaffiliated. That works out to 37.2% Democratic, 28.0% Republican and 33.6% unaffiliated, by Exchange calculation. Two days earlier, the split stood at 39.7%, 27.9% and 31.3%. So the Democratic lead fell from 11.8 points to 9.2, while the Republican share barely moved. Unaffiliated voters cast the largest single share of the 142,610 ballots added in those two days, 38.6%. The narrowing reflects a growing unaffiliated share, not a Republican surge, and nobody knows yet how those voters will mark their ballots. Mail also grew from 24% of early votes to 31% over the same stretch.

The comparison lines up cleanly. Early voting opened Oct. 12 in 2022 and Oct. 6 this year, and both counts cover eight weekday voting days. The 2022 figure comes from the state’s Oct. 25 release, a weekly survey of county boards that the office later adjusted. In-person voting is running 2.3 times that pace, and Hamilton County’s three-fold jump outpaces the state. Even so, mail carried the 2022 early vote to the end. The state’s 2022 final tally showed 842,996 returned mail ballots against 549,771 in-person ballots, or 61% mail.

Two Ways to Count Party, Two Different Margins

A TargetSmart TargetEarly screenshot dated Oct. 14 put the Ohio early voting electorate at 54% Democratic, 40% Republican and 6% other, a 14-point margin. That figure used the 228,470 ballots the state reported Oct. 13, and the Exchange has not seen an update. Under Ohio law, party affiliation comes from the primary a voter chose “within the preceding two calendar years,” per the Secretary of State’s May 2024 explanation. Anyone who skipped the primaries counts as unaffiliated. In 2024 that described 5.7 million of Ohio’s 8.1 million registered voters.

TargetSmart, which calls itself a data provider for Democratic campaigns, instead assigns every voter a modeled party from demographics and local voting patterns. Liz Walters resigned as Ohio Democratic Party chair in 2025 to become TargetSmart’s CEO, Signal Cleveland reported. Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini argues such models lean Democratic, because Black voters, big-city residents and young women are easy to classify. “No Republican group is as easily identified, so they’ll tend to be modeled as unaffiliated more often,” he wrote in 2024. TargetSmart’s own 2022 Ohio dashboard showed a near-even 47.6% to 46.6% split at this stage. That page now sits behind a client login, so the Exchange could not re-check it.

Mail-In Ballots Are the Missing Piece

Ohioans had requested 601,277 mail ballots by Oct. 5, down 26% from 812,198 at the same point in 2022, Signal Ohio found. In Hamilton County, requests fell from 58,182 to 38,856, a 33% drop. Three changes sit behind that decline, and no one has measured how much each contributed. First, Ohio early voting rules changed in March. Senate Bill 293, which Gov. Mike DeWine signed Dec. 19, 2025, ended the four-day grace period for late mail ballots, per Ballotpedia. Under the state’s voting schedule, a mail ballot now must reach the board by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.

Second, the top of the Republican ticket has spent a year attacking the method. “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in August 2025, Spectrum News reported. Third, voters have their own doubts. Cuyahoga County elections director Tony Perlatti told Signal Ohio that questions about the Postal Service are pushing voters away from mail. Poland told WLWT that more Hamilton County voters are choosing in person over mail. Voters 65 and over account for about 550,000 of all ballots issued, the dashboard’s rounded age chart shows, and roughly 270,000 of those had not come back.

Mail returns also lag in the data, because boards upload envelopes on their own schedules. By Oct. 15, Warren County had logged 32% of its mail ballots as returned and Medina County 6%. Any party split that leans on mail this early is provisional.

What Early Voters Can’t Tell You

None of this says who wins. Party history is not a vote, and a 2024 Democratic primary voter can pick Jon Husted in November. Timing matters as much as labels. “Our voters wait longer to vote, and the more motivated Democrats are, the more they vote earlier,” Republican strategist Bob Clegg told News 5 Cleveland. The 2022 record backs him up. Ohio counted 265,062 early in-person ballots in its 2022 Nov. 1 release and 549,771 by the final Monday. So 52% of all in-person early votes arrived in the last seven days, by Exchange calculation.

Democrats read the same numbers as enthusiasm. “Democrats right now are more enthusiastic about voting,” state Sen. Bill DeMora of Columbus told News 5. Poland was more measured. “I don’t think we’re looking at a historic turnout. I think it will be a good turnout,” she told WLWT. The president scheduled a Trump rally at Northern Kentucky University for Saturday. Early counts have a blind spot of their own, separate from the Republican miss the Exchange found in Ohio polls: the voters who show up last. Through Thursday, Ohio had cast 32% of its 2022 early-vote total, and the Democratic margin has already shrunk once.