There are a handful of contested races and a shortage of polls for the closest ones, but a lot of the campaigns for governor are effectively over by now.
There are a handful of contested races and a shortage of polls for the closest ones, but a lot of the campaigns for governor are effectively over by now.
A s with the Senate races, and using the same metrics and sources in the RealClearPolitics poll averages, I’m tracking the races for governor. Unlike in the Senate, each of these races matters a lot locally, but they don’t add up to something larger when combined. Something strange has happened with the polling: With the conspicuous exception of the hotly fought race for governor of Georgia, the outcomes of most of these races are now pretty clear, barring a major polling error or late surprise. But from the four very closest races, as measured by last month’s polls, we have had no further polling in the past four weeks. We’re in the dark.
It may look as if there are a bunch of races still to be decided. Given historic polling trends, it remains possible that Vivek Ramaswamy’s voters are being undercounted, but otherwise, the races in Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Maine, and Arizona look effectively over, to say nothing of Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Alaska. Let’s look at the big board, which now includes new polling on South Dakota and Alabama as well as a fresher poll that puts Arkansas out of reach, where most of us assumed it was already:
Barring a major upset, Republicans may be sweating the races for governor of Texas and Florida, but they seem pretty unlikely to lose. Georgia, where Rick Jackson holds a real but modest lead, is very much yet to be determined. And then we have four races that looked tight as a tick a month ago, some of them in some very surprising places and all involving incumbents: Republicans Jim Pillen in Nebraska, Phil Scott in Vermont, and Joe Lombardo in Nevada, and Democrat Tina Kotek in Oregon.
Then a funny thing happened with the polls: Nothing. Not one of those four races has a poll in the field in the last three weeks that was credible enough to make the cut for the RCP average. That despite Nebraska having a surprisingly competitive Senate race and Nevada being a swing state that Donald Trump shockingly won in 2024, and where the only incumbent governor to lose in 2022 went down to the current incumbent.
But after that, the pickings for tight races get slim. Ramaswamy is about the only other Republican who hasn’t gone under yet. The one post-August poll in Wisconsin, from Marquette, has David Crowley up 51 percent to 44 percent over Tom Tiffany. Katie Hobbs in Arizona is likewise past the magic 50 percent barrier in the latest poll. Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota and Jocelyn Benson in Michigan are also across the line, and Rob Sand in Iowa and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins in Alaska have been there for a while.
So, you’d think somebody in this business would poll the races that are still hot.
Let’s look in on the trends since mid-September:
It seems pretty clear that the Alaska and Maine races tightened mostly due to the heavily contested Senate races in those states keeping Republican partisans from tuning out — with the mirror image happening in New Hampshire. Georgia looks stronger than it did in mid-September, and so does Florida. On the grimmer side, the trendline in Ohio has been nothing but down, with Ramaswamy losing support, and Minnesota has pulled out of reach. Wisconsin has been a less dramatic case, but enough to tip the race into comparatively safe Democratic territory. Kansas also tightened, but hasn’t itself been polled in a while. Here in New York, Kathy Hochul remains far too unpopular to enjoy the runaway margins of other deep-blue-state candidates, but political gravity is drawing her further away from Bruce Blakeman.
Finally, there’s the interplay between the Senate and the governors’ races. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Jackson in Georgia, and Alan Wilson in South Carolina are all running well ahead of Republican Senate candidates. By contrast, Susan Collins in Maine, Michele Tafoya in Minnesota, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Dan Sullivan in Alaska, and Mike Rogers in Michigan are all in the position of having to carry their races alone with no help from the gubernatorial side.
We still have a few suspenseful races, and it would be informative if they could be polled again before the election. But most of these battles are over.