The Governors: A Trio of Rating Changes Toward Democrats as They Chase a Rare Edge in Overall Seats Held

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— We continue to have just two Toss-ups in our gubernatorial ratings, but Alaska replaces Iowa this week, while Georgia remains a Toss-up.

— Democrats used to routinely control a majority of the state governorships, but Republicans have held a majority for almost all of the post-1994 period. Democrats have a chance to grab an edge this cycle, though.

Table 1: Crystal Ball gubernatorial rating changes

Map 1: Crystal Ball gubernatorial ratings

Updating the gubernatorial races

Just as the 1994 “Republican Revolution” ended a 40-year period where Democrats always controlled the House and very often controlled the Senate, so too did that election end a four-decade era when Democrats very often held a majority of state governorships.

Since 1994, Republicans have consistently held a majority of governorships outside a four-year window from early 2007 to early 2011. At the moment, Republicans retain a 26-24 edge in state governorships. The Democrats could capture a majority this year, although the path includes winning in some hostile places (just like they need to do in the House and particularly the Senate in order to win majorities).

Let’s take a tour of the map, starting with seats that Democrats are defending and then moving to ones that Republicans are defending. Along the way, we’ll explain the rating changes we made above.

— Democrats are defending several Safe Democratic blue state governorships where Republicans have a hard time competing statewide. Republicans can of course compete statewide in Pennsylvania, but Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is on a glidepath to reelection, so we’re moving his purple state race from Likely Democratic to join the many blue states in Safe Democratic.

— Blockbuster Senate races in Maine and Michigan have overshadowed the open-seat gubernatorial races in those states, but that’s fine for Democratic gubernatorial nominees in each state, who are favored to varying degrees in both. Democrats are also favored in open-seat Wisconsin, although Republicans are still hopeful that the race will be very close and winnable down the stretch despite the more moderate David Crowley (D) edging out the more left-wing Francesca Hong a few weeks ago in a primary. Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) remains well-positioned despite holding a challenging state. Oregon remains worth watching as a sleeper: Gov. Tina Kotek (D-OR) is not popular, although we continue to believe that the Republicans’ best shot to break their four-decade-plus losing streak there was in 2022.

— The one Democratic-held open seat where Republicans are favored is Kansas, thanks to the state’s Republican lean and a potential desire to swing back to the majority party after eight years of outgoing Gov. Laura Kelly (D). Democrats picked a more populist candidate, state Sen. Cindy Holscher, in the August primary, and she did recently put out a poll showing the race with state Senate President Ty Masterson (R) basically tied. We’d like to see more before moving off our default position, which is that Democrats winning a third straight term in a red state is a tall order.

— Moving over to the current Republican seats, the one open seat where Republicans are now an underdog in our ratings is Iowa, where state Auditor Rob Sand (D) has posted consistent, though sometimes small, polling leads over businessman Zach Lahn (R). This race moves from Toss-up to Leans Democratic. We do wonder whether partisan gravity will eventually make it more of a 50-50 proposition despite Sand attracting a lot of national attention for a quality campaign so far.

— Prior to today’s update, Georgia was our only other Toss-up. We doubt we’ll have a real lean here until right before the election, and even then it may not be much of a lean. In 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to use his coattails to drag former football star Herschel Walker (R) over the finish line; this time, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is trying to do the same with former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) in the gubernatorial race.

— Joining Georgia as a Toss-up is Alaska, a Republican-leaning but quirky state with a very quirky election system. In the first round of voting, in which all candidates run together, two Democrats (former state legislators Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich) and two Republicans (businesswoman and media personality Bernadette Wilson and former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson) grabbed the four slots to advance to the ranked-choice November general election. But Begich dropped out in deference to Kreiss-Tomkins, which also had the effect of “promoting” another Republican into the top four—the details of which are convoluted in their own right, but Alaska Public Media had a good explainer. The bottom line here is that there is now one prominent Democratic contender, Kreiss-Tomkins, and two prominent Republicans, Wilson and Bronson. None of these candidates are proven statewide, but the lineup of candidates is somewhat reminiscent of the group that allowed former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) to win statewide in special and general 2022 House elections. Ballot exhaustion—in which supporters of the Republican candidates don’t rank other candidates in the ranked-choice voting allocation—threatens Republican chances. Until we know more, this race is a Toss-up, despite Alaska’s generic Republican lean. Meanwhile, voters in November will once again decide the fate of the state’s election system, which unfortunately seems to have devolved into an exercise in mischief-making.

— Gov. Joe Lombardo (R-NV) and the open seat in Ohio remain, tenuously, in Leans Republican. Lombardo seems to be weathering a challenging electoral environment reasonably well, and incumbents generally deserve a bit of deference in gubernatorial elections. But he has a real opponent in state Attorney General Aaron Ford (D). In the Buckeye State, GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy is a weak candidate who may nonetheless be saved by the state’s partisanship. The potentially troubling thing for Ramaswamy is that despite an ad blitz over the summer, the race between him and former state Department of Health Director Amy Acton (D) remains very close. Either or both of these races may fall into Toss-up soon, but we still see a modest GOP edge in each.

— Republicans seem to be in good shape in the other states they are defending, with the open seat in Florida and Govs. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) all residing in Likely Republican. We did move Florida and Texas out of Safe Republican earlier this summer, and those states, along with Nevada and Ohio, merit watching for signs of GOP erosion down the stretch of the campaign.

Conclusion

The overall math, thus, is as follows: Democrats have an edge in all of their current seats except for one, the open seat in Kansas, which remains a Leans Republican flip. Republicans, meanwhile, are now an underdog in one of their current seats, the open seat in Iowa. In terms of the overall tally, those two states cancel each other out. Republicans are also defending the two Toss-ups, open seats Alaska and Georgia. If all the other races go the way they are currently at least leaning, Republicans could defend their narrow 26-24 edge in governorships by holding Alaska and Georgia, while Democrats could get to a 25-25 split or 26-24 edge by flipping one or both. Looking at our Leans races outside of Iowa and Kansas, Nevada and Ohio seem like stronger possibilities to drop into Toss-up than any of the currently Democratic states.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.