Context <p><i>Ixodes scapularis</i> (the blacklegged tick) is a prominent disease vector that has rapidly expanded across eastern North America in recent decades due to land use and climate change. Predictive modeling is popular for ecological inference and disease management, but few models have considered the multiscale tick and host relationships that drive blacklegged tick expansion.</p> Objectives <p>Predict the probability of occurrence and relative abundance of the blacklegged tick in Ohio, USA at an informative resolution for disease surveillance (800-m²) following CDC guidelines. Determine drivers of tick expansion at the tick and host level through a multiscale analysis of climate, habitat, and host density variables.</p> Methods <p>We modeled blacklegged tick occurrence and abundance using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation to analyze the relationships of climate, habitat, and host density with field-collected data from 161 sites. We analyzed habitat variables at several spatial scales (800–5000-m²) expecting they would be most influential at scales relevant to white-tailed deer home range size.</p> Results <p>Occurrence and abundance decreased in drier, hotter areas with higher precipitation variability, and increased in heavily forested areas at the spatial scale relevant to deer home range size (1500-m²). Only the abundance model included host density variables, indicating that host densities influence abundance but not occurrence.</p> Conclusions <p>Our spatial projections show a high probability of occurrence and relative abundance throughout Ohio. Multiscale frameworks are vital for understanding the continuously changing distributions and abundances of arthropod disease vectors that rely on hosts for range expansion.</p>