Here we go again. For the second time in three consecutive election polls of Ohio's competitive race for U.S. Senate, the Democratic challenger has edged ahead of the Republican incumbent.

Despite the seven-point edge Senator Mike DeWine enjoyed last month, this doesn't look like a statistical blip: before these last three polls, DeWine had not trailed even once. Moreover, our three-poll rolling average shows a relatively stable five-point margin for DeWine earlier in the year that has now tapered to a tie. The race is clearly trending away from the incumbent.

We're seeing the same trend in other competitive races, with GOP incumbents now trailing in Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Missouri.

Earlier in the campaign season, the only Republican incumbent actually trailing was Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum—and Santorum lagged so badly and persistently that there was some justification for segregating his fate from that of Republicans generally. But now it looks more likely that the others in the GOP will share Santorum’s fate.

DeWine is viewed favorably by 46%, unfavorably by 44%. For Sherrod Brown the numbers are 45% favorable, 40% unfavorable.

Both campaigns have stepped up spending lately on TV ads.

The number one issue for voters here is the economy (though political corruption, as we note in our story on the governor's race, also ranks fairly high for Ohioans). Voters especially worried about the economy tend to prefer Brown by a large margin.

In fact, just about half of Brown's voters (47%) say that the economy is their number one concern. Thirty-six percent (36%) of all voters say so.

Sixty-three percent (63%) are relatively confident that ballots are properly counted in most elections; 34% are not confident.

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