BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Bowling Green, has won reelection in Ohio’s 5th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press, which called the race Tuesday night. The AP tabulation gave Latta 163,382 votes to 128,142 for Democrat Brian Shaver, with 588 of 601 precincts — about 98 percent — reporting; Decision Desk HQ also listed Latta as the winner.
Poliwave, citing Ohio Secretary of State results, listed the identical leading totals — Latta at 54.3 percent and Shaver at 42.6 percent — and added Libertarian Michael J. Veloff at 9,577 votes, or 3.2 percent, for an 11.7-point Latta margin. In Latta’s home Wood County, the AP county reporting unit gave him 18,374 votes with 68 of 70 precincts reporting.
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“It is an honor and privilege to have the trust of the people in Ohio’s Fifth Congressional District to represent and serve them in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Latta said in a statement posted on his campaign website, lattaforcongress.com. “I remain committed to serving every person who calls Ohio’s Fifth Congressional District home,” he said in the statement, which noted he was first elected in 2007.
Tuesday’s margin was noticeably narrower than Latta’s 2024 result. Ohio’s 5th District was redrawn in October 2025, and on the new lines the district’s 2024 presidential vote was Trump plus 23.8 points, compared with plus 29.3 on the old lines, according to FTP Elections Intelligence, citing the bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission plan adopted Oct. 31, 2025. Latta won the 2024 general election on the previous lines with 67.5 percent of the vote.
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The 5th District covers a broad stretch of northwest and west-central Ohio, including Wood, Hancock, Hardin, Wyandot, Seneca and Huron counties and parts of neighboring counties, and its voters also weighed in Tuesday on the statewide races that sent Amy Acton to the governor’s office and Sherrod Brown back to the U.S. Senate.
County boards of elections will certify the results in their official canvasses later this month, adding qualifying provisional and overseas ballots before the Secretary of State’s final certification. Latta’s new term begins when the next Congress convenes in January.
