Sabato’s Crystal Ball Moves Three Gubernatorial Races Left, Giving Democrats ‘Chance’ to Get Majority
Screenshot via Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a project of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, updated its ratings to shift three key gubernatorial races to the left, assessing the November ballot as giving Democrats a “chance” to hold the majority of governorships.
The project has made several other ratings shifts this year in the Democrats’ direction, including key House and Senate races. Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik shared the new ratings for Alaska, Iowa, and Pennsylvania Thursday along with a longer analysis.
“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,” wrote Kondik. “Democrats have a chance to grab an edge this cycle, though.”
Alaska’s open seat has moved from Likely R to Toss-up, Kondik wrote, calling it “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.
In Iowa, another open seat moved from Toss-up to Leans D, with Kondik calling the GOP nominee, businessman Zach Lahn, the “underdog” against the Democrat, state Auditor Rob Sand (D), as the latter “has posted consistent, though sometimes small, polling leads,” although “partisan gravity” could “eventually make it more of a 50-50 proposition despite Sand attracting a lot of national attention for a quality campaign so far.”
And finally, in Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is in a strong position to win re-election, with his race moving from Likely D to Safe D. Shapiro is “on a glidepath to reelection,” wrote Kondik.
The Real Clear Politics polling average currently has Shapiro up 21.2 points over his Republican opponent, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity. Shapiro has been ahead by double digits for months in the various polls RCP tracks and was as high as 31 points up in one poll in late August.
Kondik also noted that the Senate races in Maine and Michigan were eating up most of the media oxygen there, “but that’s fine for Democratic gubernatorial nominees in each state, who are favored to varying degrees in both.”
Georgia is remaining a Toss-Up for now, and “[w]e doubt we’ll have a real lean here until right before the election, and even then it may not be much of a lean,” wrote Kondik, noting that Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) popularity may help bring former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) across the finish line with him.
The open seat for Florida governor and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) re-election bid both moved from Safe Republican to Likely Republican earlier this year, noted Kondik, and both states “merit watching for signs of GOP erosion down the stretch of the campaign.”
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