Ohio Phases Out Vivek Ramaswamy Ahead of Schedule, Leaves Income Tax for Later

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio voters phased out Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday. Democrat Amy Acton, the state’s former health director, defeated him in the race for governor. NBC News projected the result at 10:49 p.m. Eastern.

Ramaswamy, a Republican biotech entrepreneur who briefly co-led the federal cost-cutting effort with Elon Musk, campaigned on phasing out Ohio’s state income tax. The plan ran on a schedule. Ohio ran on a faster one. The income tax is still here this morning. The candidate is not.

This reporter’s model forecast the phase-out with total confidence. The model was right about the phase-out. It was wrong about the item.

The numbers

Acton led 51.9 percent to 44.8 percent with about 95 percent of the expected vote counted, according to NBC News. NBC’s county analysis shows the race moved about 18 points toward Democrats from the 2024 presidential vote. That is not a swing. In this desk’s chart, that is a staircase.

Acton is the first woman elected governor of Ohio. She is the first Democrat to win the office since Ted Strickland in 2006. The model did not have a line for either of those. The model has since added two lines and a note that reads “see attached.”

The spending

Ramaswamy put a considerable amount of his own money into the race, NBC News reported. Musk put at least $5 million into a political action committee aligned with him, according to The Associated Press. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance made repeated trips to Ohio in the final weeks to rally for him.

The model counted every dollar and every visit. It converted them into a 14-point win. The conversion rate needs work. The model does not.

“In my polling, a candidate who promises to remove a tax always gets removed second,” said Delbert Hasko, a tax analyst in Dublin, Ohio, who has never been right about anything and was right about this. “It is like a raffle. The man holding the tickets is not the prize.”

The concession

Ramaswamy conceded Tuesday night. “It was a tough race. It was bitter at times, in both directions,” he said, according to NBC News. He said he hoped Acton could “bring Ohio together, to bring our voters and our citizens together.”

This reporter takes the candidate at his word. Ohio came together Tuesday. It came together at 10:49 p.m., on a chart, in one direction.

Inside the model

The model ran 40,000 simulations of Tuesday night before a single polling place opened. In every one of them, something in Ohio got phased out. This desk calls that a hit. The margin of error was one candidate.