Why Midterm Elections Matter—Especially in Cleveland and Ohio
Every four years in the United States, presidential elections dominate the national conversation. Turnout surges, ad spending explodes, and Americans pay attention. Then, two years later, midterm elections arrive, and turnout often drops by half. That gap is one of the most consequential blind spots in American civic life, because midterms frequently decide more of what actually happens in a person's daily life than the presidential race does.
Why is that, you might ask? While the presidency typically gets the spotlight, the House of Representatives and Senate – the two bodies of Congress – write the legislation that becomes the law of the land when the President signs it. Tax policy, healthcare rules, infrastructure spending, immigration law, labor protections, and many other aspects of our country’s policy affecting everyday lives often originate in Congress. A Congress opposing a President’s agenda can largely block it, whereas the collaboration of an aligned Congress and President can reshape U.S. policy, both domestic and foreign now and well into the future.
For over 150 years, YWCA Greater Cleveland has worked to promote voter access, education, and engagement for Cuyahoga County's most vulnerable communities.
What’s on the ballot this year?
• All 435 U.S. House seats
• Roughly one-third of U.S. Senate seats (33 of 100)
• Governors and other statewide offices
• State legislators
• Local offices (school boards, county officials, mayors, judges)
• Ballot measures and referenda (voted on by the people, not the legislature)
Midterm elections determine the makeup of Congress and also include critical state and local races. Most governors, state legislators, and attorneys general run on midterm ballots. These offices are crucial for everyday people, because they control things the federal government often doesn’t: school funding formulas, Medicaid expansion/reduction, policing standards, minimum wage, a women’s capacity to exercise autonomy over her body, and how election districts themselves get drawn. For most people, a state legislature's decisions affect them more directly and more often than laws coming out of Washington.
Frequently, when city councils, school boards, judges, sheriffs, and ballot initiatives get decided, local ballots can carry an outsized weight. These typically low voter turnout races are often decided by small margins, meaning that just a few votes can flip a school board or a local tax measure. Low turnout doesn't mean low stakes; it means the stakes are being decided by whomever shows up.
This November 3rd’s midterms carry a rare, concentrated weight here in Ohio, where our state’s entire executive leadership will change hands. All facing term limits, our governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, and treasurer roles are on the ballot, and no matter who wins, we’ll see a full changing of the guards. The candidates Ohioans choose will set education funding formulas, Medicaid policy, business regulation, and how future elections are run and audited, all without an incumbent track record to fall back on.
Ohio also has a closely watched U.S. Senate seat in the mix. When the current Vice President joined the President's winning ticket to the White House, Ohio's Governor made an appointment to serve out a vacated Senate term; this lawmaker now faces a battle at the polls against a candidate with deep Cleveland-area roots. This race has garnered a great deal of national attention (and funding), as the Northeast Ohio candidate's victory could tip the Senate's balance of power, shifting it away from the President's agenda.
Similarly, with all of Ohio's 15 U.S. House seats up for grabs this November, the results of Ohio's elections stand to shake up power dynamics in the House. Whoever ends up representing the districts spanning Greater Cleveland in Congress will vote on federal funding tied to the Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth systems, infrastructure dollars for the Innerbelt and RTA, and Great Lakes environmental protections—issues that touch all of our daily lives.
Beyond the statewide and federal races, midterm ballots in Cuyahoga County can include county council seats, judicial races, levies for funding schools, libraries, and disability services, and property tax rates. These are races where a few hundred votes routinely determine the outcome, meaning Greater Cleveland residents who show up to cast their ballots have far more leverage per vote than in a presidential contest.
Midterms are a crucial opportunity for voters to stand up for themselves and their community, and they happen twice as often as presidential elections. For Greater Cleveland, the 2026 midterms could hold the most powerful stakes of our generation, and our individual and collective futures could drastically change because of the momentous decisions on the November 3rd ballot. YWCA Greater Cleveland encourages you to show up at the polls and help shape the policies you want to see in place.