An Ohio organization advocating for Black voters is celebrating higher turnout in the 2026 midterm election amongst what it calls "missing" Black voters in the Buckeye State, while also assessing why the only Black candidate on the statewide ballot was the only Democrat to lose their election.
A report published this week from the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation estimated the number of Black voters who don't vote regularly shrunk from more than 600,000 to 514,000. Despite higher turnout and a banner year for Ohio Democrats, candidate for Ohio Auditor Annette Blackwell was the only Democrat not to win on the statewide ballot.
The organization's President and CEO Shayla L. Davis, a former state lawmaker said efforts to get more Black people to polls appear to have worked across Ohio resulting in 84,000 more voters. Davis said there's clearly more work to be done, especially with the 2028 presidential election on the horizon.
"We can bask in the joy of this, but the numbers aren't low enough, right? We still have 518,000 people across the state that we are going to have to reach," Davis said.
Davis told WOSU Friday most of that increase came from northeast Ohio in counties including Cuyahoga, Summit and Mahoning where community groups directly engaged Black neighborhoods by knocking on doors and directly contacting potential voters.
Davis and the foundation said Franklin County has the most missing Black voters, at about 134,000. The number of missing Black voters in Ohio's largest county did shrink this election by about 13%, but not as much as in Cuyahoga County.
Blackwell's loss is another outcome Davis said she is looking at. The Maple Heights mayor lost to Auditor-elect Frank LaRose, the current Ohio Secretary of State, while white and Latino candidates put forth by Democrats prevailed, including U.S. Senator-elect Sherrod Brown and Marilyn Zayas, who won a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.
Davis said a lot of factors probably could've caused Blackwell's loss, such as LaRose's name recognition from his previous run for U.S. Senate and eight years as Ohio's secretary of state.
Davis also said Blackwell sharing a name with former Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who lost the race for Ohio governor in 2006, could have also been a factor.
Annette Blackwell's loss and the 2026 election actually mirrors the auditor election and the race for the other statewide offices in 2006, which was the last time Democrats swept into power in Ohio. That year Barbara Sykes, a Black woman, lost the auditor's race narrowly to former Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor while Democrats won every other statewide office.
But above all else, Davis pointed to race as a factor.
"Every last one of these races were pretty close. I think the gubernatorial race had the highest percentage margin, even up to Sherrod Brown. So why didn't (Blackwell) win? That's a bigger call to racial inequity. And it causes us to look at what the party is actually doing for black candidates," Davis said.
Davis said the Ohio Democratic Party needs to look at whether they supported Blackwell's campaign enough, arguing other state parties appeared to not support Black candidates enough, like Democrat Angie Nixon, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in Florida.
The Ohio Democratic Party didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Beyond more support for Black candidates, Davis said there needs to be more strategies in place to find and engage the approximate 500,000 remaining Black voters in Ohio who didn't cast ballots.
"We have to continue to show up in the Black community, let them know that they are valued, they are relevant and to use these results as a way to motivate for more," Davis said.
Davis said groups like Count the Block, a women-led voter engagement movement in Cuyahoga County did a good job at reaching out to Black voters. She said this group, while predominately led by white women, took charge to address turnout in cities like East Cleveland after the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation called attention to missing voters in June.
"It was affirming messaging for Black women specifically to say, 'You're the backbone of democracy. We know you show up and vote. You do all the things white women need to listen to. We need to follow your lead,' which if you've noticed across the nation, that is what people are saying," Davis said.
Davis said with Democrats winning what had become a Republican-leaning state since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, it is all the more important that Black civic power is increased ahead of the 2028 election.
