The last Republican strongholds in Franklin County fell on November 3. The Democratic wave that elected Amy Acton governor washed over many of the county’s last remaining Republican areas, including the only three Franklin County cities that voted for Donald Trump in 2024 — Grove City, Obetz and Canal Winchester — The Columbus Dispatch reported on November 9, citing unofficial results from the Franklin County Board of Elections.
Statewide, Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy 52.31% to 44.4% with about 98% of the vote reported, becoming Ohio’s first woman elected governor and the first Democrat elected to the office in 20 years, New Americans Magazine reported; the Associated Press, via the Daily Caller, likewise called Ohio for Acton at 52.3%. Franklin County’s flip is the local map of that statewide result: a county that has trended among Ohio’s bluest for years finally carried its conservative southern tier with it.
The scale of the Grove City swing shows how complete the change was. Trump beat Kamala Harris in Grove City by 13 points in 2024; on November 3, Acton led Ramaswamy there by 7 points — a 20-point swing in two years, The Columbus Dispatch reported, citing the unofficial Board of Elections results.
Acton failed to win a majority in just five Franklin County townships, all of them on the county’s fringes: Plain, Brown, Hamilton, Pleasant and Jackson townships, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Every city in the county — north, south, east and west of Interstate 70 — went for the Democratic nominee for governor.
Grove City Mayor Ike Stage, who describes himself as a moderate Republican, told The Columbus Dispatch that kind of Republican “is almost non-existent anymore.” Stage told The Columbus Dispatch that Grove City’s swing does not amount to a broad political reaffiliation, but instead reflects the “state of the country” — and, on governing after the results, he told The Columbus Dispatch: “We have a city to run.” Stage was first elected Grove City’s mayor in 1988, though not continuously, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The county flip ran down the ballot as well. State Rep. Mark Sigrist, whose district covers parts of southern Franklin County, won reelection by 19 points after winning by only 3 points in 2024, The Columbus Dispatch reported; a Dispatch statehouse report put Sigrist at about 59% of 44,597 votes to Denise D’Angelo’s roughly 41% in Ohio House District 10. Democratic challenger Don Leonard flipped Ohio’s 15th U.S. Congressional District, unseating Republican Rep. Mike Carey by about 52% to 45%, with Libertarian Brennan Barrington at about 3%, in a district rated likely Republican, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Statewide, Democrats also broke the Republican Ohio House supermajority for the first time since 2013, The Columbus Dispatch reported, citing the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee — a shift that will shape how Governor-elect Acton’s first budget moves through the Statehouse next year.
Franklin County’s southern tier held out the longest for a reason. The cities south of Interstate 70 that stayed Republican longest tend to be whiter, older and less college-educated than the rest of the county, The Columbus Dispatch reported in its analysis of the results — the same profile that anchored Republican margins across Ohio’s suburbs for a generation.
The flip was two decades in the making. In the 2000 presidential election, Columbus, Whitehall, Bexley and Grandview Heights were the only Franklin County cities where a majority voted for Democrat Al Gore, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Worthington became the first northern suburb to flip in 2004, when John Kerry beat George W. Bush there by just one vote; Barack Obama added Reynoldsburg and Gahanna in 2008; and by 2016, Trump had lost Upper Arlington, Hilliard, Dublin, Westerville and New Albany after years of Republican wins there, even while dominating statewide, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The north flipped suburb by suburb over twenty years. The south of I-70 held — until November 3, 2026.
The pattern was not confined to Franklin County. NewsForce247’s results coverage this week tracked the same movement in the county next door, in Delaware County’s historic Democratic wins, while one of Ohio’s closest House races remains unsettled in Hamilton County, where a 19-vote margin is headed to a recount.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: on unofficial results reported by The Columbus Dispatch from the Franklin County Board of Elections, Acton carried every Franklin County city, including all three that backed Trump in 2024, and the county’s down-ballot map moved with her. What we’re still waiting on: the Franklin County Board of Elections canvass and certification, which will make the November 3 numbers official; no certification date was stated in the reporting.
What happens next: the county canvass and certification come first, and Governor-elect Acton takes office in January, a transition confirmed in JobsOhio’s November 9 Honda announcement coverage. For Franklin County Republicans, the work Stage described — regrouping after losing the last suburban map they held — starts with a county party that no longer holds a single city.
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