Democrats Win Majority of Governorships in US Governor Elections

The 2026 governor election results gave Democrats five Republican-held governorships: Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada. According to NBC News , they will hold a majority of governor’s offices for the first time in 16 years, and Republicans did not flip a single one. Most of the coverage has been about Congress, which we covered in our full midterm results . But governors and legislatures decide things Congress can’t. They will run the 2028 presidential election, command the National Guard and choose how far to cooperate on immigration. Those are the fights Trump has mostly had with Democratic-led states, the Associated Press noted. Republicans went into Tuesday holding 26 of the 50 governorships, NBC reported. Thirty-six states elected a governor, and 19 seats were open, according to the AP story republished by PBS NewsHour . The AP’s lede called the results “a rebuke to President Donald Trump and GOP policymaking.” Three winners made history, the AP reported. In Georgia, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms beat Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, who spent more than $200 million of his own money. She is the first Black woman elected governor of any US state. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking a third term. She will be the state’s first Latina governor. No Democrat had won statewide in Texas since 1994, and she was outspent about 5 to 1 on ads, according to AdImpact data cited by the AP. In Ohio, Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy to become the state’s first woman governor. Ramaswamy had run an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother . Rob Sand beat Republican Zach Lahn to become Iowa’s first Democratic governor elected in two decades, NBC reported. In Nevada, NBC projected that Attorney General Aaron Ford would unseat Gov. Joe Lombardo. Democrats also held the competitive seats they were defending, including Arizona, Pennsylvania and Oregon. In open seats, Jocelyn Benson beat Republican John James in Michigan and David Crowley beat Republican Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, called it “a new era of Democratic leadership in states across the country.” To measure how far these states moved, we set each winner’s margin on NBC’s results page against Trump’s 2024 margin. A governor’s race isn’t a presidential race, and the figures are unofficial. The size of the shift is still clear. The largest swings came in the three states Trump won by double digits. Iowa moved more than 24 points, turning a 13-point Trump win into an 11-point Democratic one. The two swing states, Georgia and Nevada, moved about 10 points each. We broke down the national shift among voter groups in our AP VoteCast analysis . Two races are uncalled, and the final tally depends on them. In Kansas, Democratic state Sen. Cindy Holscher led Republican Ty Masterson 50.3% to 49.7% with about 99% of the expected vote in, on NBC’s results page. The Kansas Secretary of State posts unofficial returns as counties report. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is term-limited, and the AP saw the seat as Republicans’ best pickup chance. In Alaska, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins led Republican Bernadette Wilson 49.1% to 29.2% with three-quarters of the vote in, according to NBC, which had not called the race. The election tracker MultiState lists Alaska as a Democratic flip. We are treating it as uncalled until the AP or the state says otherwise. So the count depends on whose tally you read. The AP says Democrats will hold at least 27 governorships in 2027. MultiState counts 29 Democrats and 20 Republicans, with Kansas pending. The shift went further down the ballot. Democrats flipped nine legislative chambers in seven states, and Republicans flipped none, according to MultiState’s legislative tracker . Before the election, Republicans controlled both chambers in 28 states and Democrats in 18. On MultiState’s count, Democrats will control 23 legislatures in 2027 and Republicans 22, with three not yet called. Pennsylvania’s flip may matter most. Democrats took the state Senate, run by Republicans since 1994, turning a 27-23 deficit into a 26-24 majority, Spotlight PA reported . With Gov. Josh Shapiro re-elected and the House still Democratic, the party now runs all of state government in a presidential battleground. “For the first time in decades, Pennsylvanians used their power tonight to flip the state Senate,” Shapiro said. Wisconsin went the same way. Democrats won the Senate 18-15 and the Assembly 53-46, their first hold on both chambers in 18 years, WPR reported . With Crowley as governor, it is the party’s first trifecta there since Jim Doyle’s time. WPR credited the national mood and district lines redrawn in 2024. MultiState also lists Democratic flips of both chambers in New Hampshire, and of the House in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas. In North Carolina and Texas, Republicans kept the state Senate. Six of the 2024 presidential battlegrounds, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, will have Democratic governors in 2027. The AP noted that these governors could shape how the 2028 race is run. That follows a year of fights with the Trump administration over voting rules, including limits on mail ballots. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democrats can now pass laws without Republican votes. Elsewhere, newly elected Democratic governors will face Republican legislatures, or split ones as in Texas. Kansas has to finish its count first. In Alaska, mailed ballots count if they arrive within 10 days. If no candidate passes 50%, the state runs its ranked-choice tabulation on Nov. 18.