Breaking Slowly in the Governors’ Races

Y esterday, I updated my look at the Senate races. You can go back there to read my explanation of my method, which I won’t repeat here. On tap today: the governors. I last looked at the gubernatorial campaigns on September 21, but I’m using September 15 as my baseline to measure shifts since mid-September.

The picture remains grim, although many races are still contested, and the worst Republican losses are apt to be concentrated in swing states that currently have Democratic governors — places such as Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota where a better environment might have put Republicans in position for pickups. One state (Kansas) does still look as if it will flip to the GOP, and a second (Oregon) looks competitive — for now. But Republican-held governorships are effectively gone in Alaska and Iowa and in hot water in a broad array of other states: Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, maybe Florida, Nebraska, and Vermont, and (if you believe the one poll, which I don’t) Arkansas. Given the current environment, it also seems high time for somebody to poll South Carolina, one of seven states without current polling.

Note, however, that of the seven states where RealClearPolitics doesn’t even have enough polls to compute an average, four of those show close races — an appearance that may be a misleading artifact of limited polling in Arkansas, Nebraska, Vermont, and Oregon. Another lightly polled race in Rhode Island appears to be very volatile, with Moderate Party candidate Ken Block up to 35 percent in the most recent poll, as support shifts to him from the fading Republican contender, Aaron Guckian.

The optimistic case is that Republicans are holding onto their trio of very long-standing Sun Belt governorships in Florida, Texas, and Georgia, where all three Republicans are polling above 48 percent and thus are close to the magic 50 percent. The pessimist would say that these (along with Nebraska and a strong incumbent in Vermont) will simply be the last ones swept out to sea. Joe Lombardo’s fate now looks impossible to project, given how Nevada polling has gone over the years. Oregon was a major disappointment in 2022, when Christine Drazan led in polls in a three-way race for months until Democrats coalesced behind incumbent Tina Kotek. In a rematch this time, Drazan is again exploiting Oregonian voter discontent, but I will need to see more robust polling and signs of Drazan getting above 46 percent before I get excited about that race.

In terms of trends over the past month, Republicans have mostly been gaining ground in races they are going to lose anyway, although Rick Jackson in Georgia and Byron Donalds in Florida have both improved their positions. The governors’ races in Alaska and Maine have tightened a bit in tandem with improvements in the Senate races in those states (while Kansas is going in the opposite direction). By contrast, the bottom seems to be dropping out for Zach Lahn in Iowa and Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio.

Finally, if we compare the states where there is a race for both offices at once, Republican governor candidates are running ahead of their Senate candidate colleagues in New Hampshire, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, and (if the few polls are to believed) Nebraska, while trailing significantly behind their Senate tickets in Maine, Iowa, Alaska, Minnesota, and Michigan. In Ohio, Ramaswamy and Jon Husted look likely to run closely together, which suggests that perhaps the virtues of Sherrod Brown and the weaknesses of Ramaswamy as candidates are both a bit overstated as factors.

There is, again, both hope and danger here: hope that one strong candidate can help another, and danger that a weak one can drag the whole ticket under. Will Ken Paxton swim with Greg Abbott, or drown him? Susan Collins, Dan Sullivan, and Ashley Hinson are going to need to win without help from their statewide colleagues in the gubernatorial races. Kelly Ayotte, by contrast, plainly has her own brand that isn’t doing much for John Sununu. Voters in New Mexico are marginally more willing to entertain a Republican for governor than in the Senate, while Keisha Lance Bottoms isn’t drawing the kind of swing-voter support that Jon Ossoff looks to have locked up in Georgia.