Republicans usually overperform their final polling average by a few points, so the Dem governors’ shrinking leads start to look awfully thin indeed.
It’s not surprising that the governor’s races in places like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New York, and Texas are getting a lot of the attention in the national media coverage this year – they’re big states, with well-known names, and in the case of the Sunshine State, a potential 2024 presidential candidate. But if you look beyond those races, at some of the lesser-covered gubernatorial races, you can see the outlines of a particularly big GOP wave year in the battle for the governors’ mansions this year.
There’s been only one poll of the Kansas governor’s race since the second week of September, and incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly was only ahead by two points, 45 percent to 43 percent, over Republican Derek Schmidt. In 2018, a good year for Democrats nationally, Kelly won 48 percent to 43 percent. That same poll in September found incumbent Republican senator Jerry Moran leads his Democratic challenger Mark Holland 45 percent to 33 percent. Knocking off an incumbent is never easy, but this race is still rated “toss up” by the Cook Political Report.
The Michigan governor’s race once looked frustratingly out of reach for Republicans. As recently as October 8, incumbent governor Gretchen Whitmer led the GOP’s Tudor Dixon in the RealClearPolitics average by 11.3 percentage points – an outlook for a solid, decisive win. That lead is down to 3.2 percentage points in the most recent RCP average. Of the last eight polls, only one had Whitmer above 50 percent. You can’t say that Dixon is a shoo-in, but like many other Republicans across the country, she appears to be gaining momentum at just the right time.
For much of the year, Minnesota Democratic governor Tim Walz looked like a safe bet for reelection against Republican Scott Jensen. But one poll conducted this month put Walz up by five percentage points, and the other by Trafalgar put Jensen ahead by about a percentage point. Minnesota is far from an easy state for the GOP to win, but Republicans have won statewide in wave years; I’m thinking of Norm Coleman in the Senate race and Tim Pawlenty in the governor’s race in 2002. (Also, note that Minnesota’s House delegation is currently evenly split, with four Republicans and four Democrats. If you add up all the votes for House candidates in 2020, Democrats lead 48.6 percent to 46.1 percent – not an overwhelming Democratic lead.)
In Nevada, Republican Joe Lombardo hasn’t trailed incumbent Democrat Steve Sisolak since mid-August.
The pattern in the New Mexico gubernatorial race resembles the one in Michigan, a blue state that can elect Republicans to the governor’s mansion in the right kind of wave conditions, where a first-term incumbent is getting a percentage in the high 40s in public polling much of the year. This is another state that feels under-polled; since the first week of October, the only two firms to conduct surveys are the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling and the frequently against-the-grain Trafalgar. PPP has incumbent Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham ahead by eight percentage points, while Trafalgar has Republican Mark Ronchetti ahead by one point.
When it comes to analyzing Oregon’s gubernatorial race, I’ll defer to the great Nate Hochman, but I notice that Republican Christine Drazan hasn’t trailed a poll this autumn.
Wisconsin, incumbent Democratic governor Tony Evers appears to be hanging on by his fingernails over GOP challenger Tim Michels, and for a stretch in late September, Michels was leading by one to three percentage points in four straight polls. This one looks to come down to the wire; I went back and checked how Evers did in 2018 compared to the late polling, when he was taking on then-incumbent GOP governor Scott Walker. Marquette showed a tie, and Emerson showed Evers leading by five percentage points. Evers went on to win by 1.4 percentage points.
All of these would represent Republicans taking over governor’s mansions that are currently occupied by Democrats. Keep in mind, Democrats are expected to easily win the gubernatorial races in Massachusetts and Maryland, ending an era of GOP governors in those blue-leaning states. But the GOP has failed to mount a competitive race in just a handful of states. Paul LePage’s bid to return as governor of Maine hasn’t really caught fire yet. In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro has led every poll against walking controversy machine Doug Mastriano, but every now and then a survey shows Mastriano within a handful of points. In Colorado, Republicans probably would have liked to see Heidi Ganahl mount a stronger challenge to incumbent Democrat Jared Polis, but compared to most other Democratic governors, Polis largely avoided giving Republicans easy targets for criticism in his first term.
As for the incumbent Republican governors, it is possible that none of them will lose reelection this year. From Kim Reynolds in Iowa, to Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, to Phil Scott in Vermont, to Mike DeWine in Ohio, a lot of GOP incumbents aren’t even breaking a sweat. (As far as I can tell, no one has bothered to poll Tennessee’s governor’s race, which is a little surprising to those of us who can remember Al Gore as a senator.)
I wouldn’t put Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico or Wisconsin into the “Republicans are going to win” pile quite yet. But the GOP challengers are hanging around, keeping it close, avoiding mistakes, and hoping for the remaining undecided voters to break their way. And if you subscribe to the idea that Republicans usually overperform their final polling average by a few points, the shrinking leads of these Democratic governors start looking awfully thin indeed.