POLITICO NIGHTLY: How independents scrambled the 2022 map
View in browser BY DAVID SIDERS Presented by Visa Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) talks with supporters during a rally in May. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images INDEPENDENT STREAK — Ohio has become so heavily Republican in recent years that Joe Biden all but ceded the state to Donald Trump, who carried it by about 8 percentage points in 2020. Yet in this year’s U.S. Senate contest, a series of polls — including a new Marist Poll out this week — suggest the race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance could be close. If it ends up that way, it’ll be a departure from the state’s recent voting patterns. Part of it is that Vance is lagging with independents, narrowly trailing Ryan among them, according to Marist. And Ohio is far from alone. With the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade , falling gas prices and the nomination of a raft of hard-line Republicans in the primaries, independent voters have been giving Democrats better marks ...