How the Gubernatorial Races Are Breaking

A s I detailed on Thursday, the picture for Republicans in the Senate is looking grim from the mid-September polls.

I’ll use the same metrics here to look at the governors’ races:

For the polling averages, I look at the RealClearPolitics average for each race with particular attention to how far each candidate is from the magic 50 percent mark and what share of the remaining undecided vote would need to break in the Republican candidate’s direction to get to 50. (Or to 50 percent of the two-party vote, if there are third-party candidates being polled.) I typically flag how robust the data are for each race — how many polls make up each state’s average, and how many of those are relatively recent. I’m not making mathematical predictions or odds. I’m just collecting the data we have in one place, asking how much room there remains to move based on current polling, and drawing some conclusions about what races are most winnable if one party or the other has the wind in its favor.

“Last Poll” and my tracking of “Post 9/1” polls both use the last day a poll was in the field. Also, I’m using the final-outcome polling in Alaska and Maine, both of which have ranked-choice voting systems…Incumbents are in bold, and states are colored by 2024 results. “Break” shows what percentage of the remaining voters would need to break to the Republican candidate to win.

The picture here is bleak, although not quite as unrelievedly so as in the Senate. As of now, Republicans look primed to hold on to two blue-state governorships in New England (New Hampshire and Vermont, behind popular incumbents Kelly Ayotte and Phil Scott), and to reclaim the Kansas governorship after two terms of Democrat Laura Kelly. The GOP still has the upper hand in the Republican bedrock states of Texas and Florida. And Republicans are still very much in the game in tight races in Nevada, Georgia, and Ohio.

Zoom out, however, and this is still a terrible situation and one that probably spells doom for scores of Republican state legislators across the map as well. The one poll we have shows Democrats with a powerful lead in red but idiosyncratic (and hard-to-poll) Alaska. Voters tired of multi-term Democratic control in the Midwest (in states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan) look primed to keep them in Democratic hands out of antipathy to Republicans. New York’s roundly despised Kathy Hochul is nonetheless in strong shape for reelection, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs is well ahead, Republican Steve Hilton is getting trampled in California, and, with the retirement of Kim Reynolds, Democrats look increasingly likely to reclaim the governor’s mansion in Iowa. Chuck Grassley might want to rethink running for another term at age 95 in two years.

Open-seat races look to be easy Democratic holds in New Mexico, Maine, and Colorado, as well. Nevada’s Joe Lombardo is in real trouble, and shockingly, Greg Abbott is starting to look as if he’ll be too busy holding his own seat to worry much about helping Ken Paxton and Bo French. There’s also the possibility that unpolled races, such as South Carolina, Nebraska, or maybe even Vermont, could prove more competitive than we currently assume. By contrast, Wisconsin and maybe Iowa look like the only contested races close enough for even a realistic possibility that Republicans could put them back on the board. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota show the value for Democrats of recruiting: David Crowley leads in a race that Francesca Hong was likelier to put in deep jeopardy in Wisconsin, while Amy Klobuchar’s strength in Minnesota helps her overcome the scandalous baggage of Tim Walz’s administration even against a strong Republican contender in state house speaker Lisa Demuth. Josh Shapiro’s national buzz will only grow if he can win purple Pennsylvania by something in the neighborhood of 20 points. Other national aspirants such as JB Pritzker and Wes Moore will also likely be looking to run up the score.

So few of these races were polled head-to-head by the end of June that it’s hard to trace much movement. The two races that have actually shifted more Republican since then are New Hampshire, where Ayotte has consolidated her position, and New York, where Hochul, while remaining wooden and generally disliked, can count on a blue-state environment. The Sun Belt polling skid in Florida, Texas, and Arizona presents a more troubling thematic picture.

It’s hard to see what else Republicans can do at this point except try to rally their base, spend money on negative ads, and play all the way to the whistle. This is a toxic national environment for a whole bunch of reasons: second-midterm blues, tariffs, the war with Iran, fear of artificial intelligence (an industry which is, ironically, the one thing keeping economic growth and the stock market humming), discontent with Trumpian overreach on immigration, and the overall spectacle of a president consumed with vanity projects, self-enrichment, personal vendettas, and really anything and everything but the kitchen-table concerns that got him elected just two Novembers ago.

On the other hand, hard elections are where the cream rises to just above the waterline. Republican gubernatorial candidates who can weather this storm outside of the reddest precincts, or who win by big margins, will be putting themselves in future national conversations.