Why these voters, and why now
Close to six in ten of the Ohio voters most focused on abortion and reproductive rights are still in play for governor, against about four in ten voters statewide. PharosGraph counts 1,192,811 Ohio voters in the top fifth nationally for focus on the issue, and 682,287 of them are in at least one of our two Persuade audiences for this race, one for each candidate. The rest are already in a turnout audience for one of the candidates. These voters live in every part of the state, so no county gathers them, but each one can be reached as a voter.
Inside Elections has rated the race between Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy a Toss-up since October 1, and Ohioans have been voting early and by mail since October 6. The two candidates sit on opposite sides of the issue. Ramaswamy calls himself unapologetically pro-life, and Acton supports keeping and broadening the reproductive care Ohio voters wrote into the state constitution in 2023, when the amendment passed with 57 percent.
In PharosGraph's weekly read of the race, reproductive rights has ranked third in each of the last four runs, from September 24 through October 15, behind the economy and cost of living and healthcare access and costs. The rank has held steady, so the issue's place in the race is settled. What the map adds is which of the voters most focused on it a campaign still has a chance to move.
Among all Ohio voters, 44 percent are in at least one of the two Persuade audiences for governor. Among the 1,192,811 most focused on abortion and reproductive rights, the share is 57 percent, and among the 599,406 in the top tenth nationally it reaches 65 percent. The more focused a voter is on the issue, the likelier that voter is to still be in play.
Ohio isn't unusual in how many of these voters it has, and that's the point. A campaign doesn't need a state where abortion and reproductive rights lead the race to find the voters they lead for. PharosGraph scores every registered voter in the country the same way, so the same map can be drawn for any state and any race.
The amber group is concentrated in Franklin County (70,600), Cuyahoga County (68,671), Hamilton County (43,343), Summit County (41,218) and Montgomery County (31,028), which together hold 37 percent of it. Its 2024 turnout was 91 percent, against 74 percent statewide. These voters are a little older than the state as a whole, with a mean age of 54 against 51, and compared with all Ohio voters they are more focused on climate and gun policy and less on immigration and crime.
PharosGraph ranks these audiences weekly and refreshes them monthly, so a campaign activating now reaches this fall's voters and not a list built in the spring. The two abortion and reproductive rights salience tiers, the five position bands on the issue and the Persuade and GOTV audiences for governor are available now through L2 DataMapping and in LiveRamp. For a campaign with an abortion and reproductive rights message, these are the voters most open to it. Ohioans have been voting since October 6, so campaigns and issue groups talking about the issue should reach these voters now, while ballots are being cast.