Democrats flip four governorships and move toward their first majority of governors since 2010

Democrats flipped four governorships on Tuesday, in Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio, and held every seat of their own that had been called by early Wednesday. Republicans entered Election Day with 26 governors to the Democrats' 24, and 36 of the 50 offices were on the ballot. The Democratic Governors Association said in a statement that its party is "set to represent the majority of states for the first time since 2010," and NBC News reported the four flips in a story published at 1:11 a.m. Eastern, carried by NBC Boston.

The arithmetic is simple but not yet final. Four flips with no Democratic losses would give Democrats 28 governors and Republicans 22. That count depends on three races that were still open when we wrote this: Kansas, where Democrat Cindy Holscher led Republican Ty Masterson by about 5,900 votes with nearly all precincts counted; Nevada, where Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo faced Democrat Aaron Ford; and Alaska, a four-way ranked-choice contest whose polls closed at 1 a.m. Eastern. Kansas is a Democratic-held seat, so a loss there would cut the margin, not erase it.

This story collects what has been called, by whom, and what the winners said. It also sets out what the results change, what the polls got wrong, and what remains unsettled. Our reports from election night on Texas and on Ohio's governor and Senate races have more on those two states.

The four flips

In Texas, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa defeated Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking a fourth term. Abbott conceded at his Austin watch party before the Associated Press called the race, telling supporters, "Mathematically we're not going to be able to win this election," according to a post by New York Times reporter Patrick Svitek. The AP's call followed, KPRC reported. Decision Desk HQ's count at midnight Eastern had Hinojosa at 52.8% to Abbott's 45.8% with about 86% of the expected vote in, on its Texas page. She will be the first Democrat to hold the office since Ann Richards left it in January 1995 and the state's first Latina governor.

In Georgia, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated Republican Rick Jackson, a health-care executive who the AP said put more than $200 million of his own money into the race. The AP projected the result at about 9:24 p.m. Eastern after Jackson conceded, FOX 5 Atlanta reported. Bottoms will be the first Black woman elected governor of any state and the first Democrat to hold Georgia's governorship in 24 years, by NBC's count. WFXG put her share at 54% statewide at 11:32 p.m., in its report on Jackson's concession.

In Iowa, State Auditor Rob Sand defeated Republican Zach Lahn for the open seat. Decision Desk HQ called it at 9:57 p.m. Eastern, per its post, and the AP followed at 11:12 p.m., according to KWQC. Sand is the first Democrat elected governor of Iowa since 2006, and Trump carried the state by 13 points in 2024, NBC noted.

In Ohio, Amy Acton, the former state health director, defeated Vivek Ramaswamy. The AP's count had her at 50.8% to 45.9% with 86% counted when TIME published at 11:02 p.m. Eastern. She will be the first woman elected governor of Ohio and the first Democrat to hold the office since Ted Strickland left in 2011. Ramaswamy told supporters, "I have to tell you I have some serious concerns about the future direction of our country. There's no avoiding that," the AP reported in a story carried by the Springfield News-Sun. Acton said, "The healing begins today."

Sources: Decision Desk HQ, Texas; WFXG; KWQC; TIME. All counts are partial and will change.

The holds and the Republican wins

Democrats held the open seat in Wisconsin, where Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley defeated Rep. Tom Tiffany. Tiffany conceded before 10 p.m. Central, WISN reported. Crowley told supporters that "Wisconsin isn't a red state or a blue state" and that "in a state this close, nobody gets to govern alone," the AP reported via MPR News. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, posted that Democrats "will hold a governing trifecta for the first time in nearly two decades."$

Gov. Josh Shapiro won reelection in Pennsylvania with a call from the AP at 8:01 p.m., one minute after polls closed, WITF reported. His opponent, Stacy Garrity, said afterward, "Certainly, I wish we had more resources come in earlier," according to City & State Pennsylvania. In Michigan, Decision Desk HQ called the open seat for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over John James at 10:45 p.m. Eastern, on its Michigan page; NBC's 1:11 a.m. story still described Michigan as tight, so we treat it as called by DDHQ only. CBS News projected Gov. Katie Hobbs the winner in Arizona over Rep. Andy Biggs, in a report carried by Yahoo News. The AP reported that Sen. Amy Klobuchar won Minnesota's open seat over Lisa Demuth, per Gray Television's Live 5 News. JB Pritzker in Illinois, Kathy Hochul in New York and Wes Moore in Maryland won reelection by AP calls reported in the AP's governors roundup carried by WBTV and the PBS NewsHour live blog, and ABC News projected Ned Lamont's reelection in Connecticut on its live results map.$$$

Republicans won where they were expected to and held the one competitive open seat on their side. In Florida, Rep. Byron Donalds defeated Democrat David Jolly by about 1.5 points with most votes counted, WUSF reported. He will be Florida's first Black governor. Jolly told supporters, "We have lost this election tonight, but we haven't lost the fight." The Republican Governors Association issued victory statements for Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Jim Pillen in Nebraska, Alan Wilson in South Carolina and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas, including one on New Hampshire in which RGA chair Greg Gianforte said, "Granite Staters made the right choice to keep New Hampshire on the path of low taxes." We found no overall election-night statement from the RGA on the loss of four seats.$

The results page for each race is on 567politics, including Georgia, Iowa, Kansas and Nevada.

Three Black governors at once

Bottoms, Moore and Donalds will serve at the same time starting in January. NBC reported that there has never been more than one Black governor in office at once. Bottoms is also the first Black woman to win a governorship anywhere, and Crowley will be Wisconsin's first Black governor. Hinojosa will be the first Latina governor of Texas, Acton the first woman elected in Ohio, and Klobuchar the first woman elected in Minnesota, by the AP's and the Star Tribune's accounts. Our pre-election report on the record number of women running for governor gives the baseline those results change.

Bottoms said in her victory speech, "I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel," and that "no amount of money will ever never ever ever overcome the power of the people," theGrio reported. Jackson, in his concession, said, "Tonight, the voters spoke and I respect their decision," and that Bottoms "deserves our congratulations and our prayers as she prepares to take office."

What Trump said

President Trump's comments on the governors were about Texas. On Truth Social he wrote, "If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn't become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn't have lost," CBS Austin reported. "RINO" is a pejorative for Republicans the writer considers insufficiently loyal; we quote it because it is the president's word, not ours. He also wrote, "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" Our separate story on Trump's reaction to the midterms checks that claim against the record. Fortune's tally of Trump-endorsed candidates lists Ramaswamy in Ohio and Steve Hilton in California among those who lost and Donalds among those who won, in its Nov. 4 report. We found no Trump comment on Georgia, Iowa or Ohio by 3 a.m. Eastern. Abbott's office did not respond to CBS Austin.

Andy Beshear, the Kentucky governor who chairs the DGA, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, its vice chair, said in their joint statement that "Democratic governors are also a firewall in the states against Donald Trump's lawlessness and reckless policies." That is a partisan characterization; the statement's factual claim, that Democrats will hold a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010, matches the AP's account that Democrats "last gained a majority of governorships in 2006" and "Republicans regained the majority four years later," in Marc Levy's report carried by WBTV.

What the polls said and what they missed

The final polls pointed to close races in Georgia, Texas and Ohio and a modest Democratic lead in Iowa. The counts so far run several points more Democratic than the polls in every one of those states.

Sources: WSB-TV on the InsiderAdvantage poll; Newsweek's Texas roundup; 270toWin's Ohio table; Emerson College Polling, Iowa. Counts are partial.

The gap between polls and results is a pattern, not yet an explanation. Polls model who will vote; a turnout surge among groups the models underweighted would produce exactly this shape. The AP Voter Poll, conducted by SSRS for the AP and the television networks among about 80,000 registered voters from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3, found about six in ten voters disapproving of Trump and about four in ten saying they cast their House vote to oppose him, according to the AP's summary carried by PBS. That survey asked about the House, not governors, and its margin of error for the full sample is 0.6 points; state subsamples are less precise. We covered its early findings in our exit poll report. No representative poll of how Americans view the governors' results exists yet, so we make no claim about public reaction to them.

• Final poll
• Partial count

0%

20%

40%

60%

GeorgiaFinal poll: 49%Partial count: 54%

TexasFinal poll: 48%Partial count: 52.8%

OhioFinal poll: 48%Partial count: 50.8%

GeorgiaTexasOhio

Source: WSB-TV, Newsweek, 270toWin, Decision Desk HQ, TIME, WFXG

Show the numbers

State	Final poll	Partial count
Georgia	49%	54%
Texas	48%	52.8%
Ohio	48%	50.8%

What the new governors say they will do

The winners campaigned on specific state policies, and the offices they won come with different powers. Hinojosa pledged to end Texas's 2025 school voucher program and state takeovers of districts, to replace the education commissioner, and to "veto gerrymandered electoral maps," the Texas Tribune reported. Most of that requires the Legislature, which remains Republican. Abbott had run on a plan to eliminate school district property taxes for homeowners and an $8.5 billion school funding package.

Bottoms promised full Medicaid expansion on her first day, replacing the Georgia Pathways program, and said she would seek to repeal the state's six-week abortion limit, calling it "a life and death issue," the AP reported via OPB. Jackson had proposed halving the state income tax in four years and eliminating it in eight. Georgia's legislature is also Republican, so expansion by executive action alone is uncertain.

Sand, on his campaign site, lists universal all-day pre-kindergarten, more oversight of the state's private-school scholarship accounts, and a reversal of what he calls the harms of Medicaid privatization. The RGA called him a "tried-and-true Liberal Democrat" in an Oct. 28 statement. Acton ran on affordability, health care and public schools and broke with her party by opposing transgender athletes in girls' sports, Fox News reported; Ramaswamy had proposed deeper tax cuts and consolidation of public universities. Our election-eve report on Ohio's polls, money and positions has more detail on both.

Governors matter beyond their own agendas. The AP noted before the vote that the winners "could have substantial influence over election administration in the 2028 presidential election," and that Trump has clashed with Democratic governors over National Guard deployments, immigration operations and federal aid. Governors also sign or veto congressional maps, which makes Hinojosa's pledge relevant if Texas Republicans attempt another mid-decade redistricting.

Differing readings of the night

Democrats describe the results as a verdict on the president. Beshear and Whitmer said their party won "by competing and winning everywhere" and by "staying focused on the biggest issues impacting Americans every day." That reading fits the AP Voter Poll's finding that most voters disapproved of Trump, but a House-vote survey cannot show why any particular governor's race turned.

Republicans who have spoken so far offer narrower accounts. Trump attributes the Texas loss to Abbott's own choices. Garrity in Pennsylvania cited money that arrived too late. Ramaswamy spoke of concerns about "the future direction of our country" without assigning blame. The RGA's state-by-state statements claimed the holds and said nothing about the losses. A fuller Republican explanation may come once the counts settle; until then, we note the absence rather than fill it.

A third reading, from the candidates themselves, is about matching the state rather than the national mood. Crowley's line that nobody in Wisconsin "gets to govern alone," Hinojosa's "post-partisan" framing and Acton's break with her party on sports all point to campaigns built for specific electorates. Whether those choices mattered more than the national environment cannot be settled from Tuesday's numbers alone.

What people were saying online

We looked for reaction on X and Reddit. Reddit's listings were blocked from our systems overnight, so we could not sample any subreddit. X could not be opened directly; the posts below were found through search-engine indexes of x.com and we have not verified them beyond the text those indexes showed. This is a selection of posts by named public figures and news accounts, not a sample of public opinion.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who had just won Minnesota's governorship herself, posted that "Georgia chose strong leadership" in electing Bottoms. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wrote that Acton "ran a superb campaign." Vos, the Wisconsin Republican speaker, acknowledged the Democratic trifecta in the post quoted above. Semafor's David Weigel reported that Acton never met Ramaswamy during the campaign and "let his concession go to voicemail," a detail we have not confirmed with either campaign. The Daily Texan, the University of Texas student paper, posted that Abbott had conceded before the AP call. Zakka Jacob, an Indian television journalist who is not based in the United States, offered the view that Ramaswamy's loss showed one should "never attack your opponent personally." We found no indexed posts from ordinary American users about the governors' results, and no Republican officeholder posts beyond Vos's.

What remains unknown

Kansas, Nevada and Alaska will decide the final count. Kansas, per the Johnson County Post, had Holscher ahead 546,523 to 540,651 with nearly all precincts counted and no AP call. Nevada's count had not been reported by any outlet we could open; our pre-election report on the Lombardo-Ford race had it tied. Alaska's ranked-choice tabulation will take time. The partial counts in the called races will move, and the exact final margins matter for the poll-versus-result comparison above. We also lack verbatim concession remarks from Lahn and Tiffany and any detailed Republican account of the losses. We will update the race pages as counts are certified.

Differing perspectives

What explains the results of the 2026 governor races, in which Democrats flipped four Republican-held seats?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• A national verdict on President Trump

  Who holds it: The Democratic Governors Association, DGA chair Andy Beshear, vice chair Gretchen Whitmer and many Democratic officials

  Democratic leaders argue that voters across very different states, including Texas, Iowa and Ohio, which Trump carried by double digits in 2024, moved toward their party at the same time, which they read as a judgment on the president's record on prices, health care and the use of federal power against states. They say their governors won by competing everywhere and by staying on everyday issues such as jobs, schools and roads, and that voters chose Democratic governors as a check on Washington. They point to the AP Voter Poll, in which about six in ten voters disapproved of Trump, as evidence that the national climate drove the night.

  In their words: Democratic Governors Association statement by Govs. Andy Beshear and Gretchen Whitmer ↗

• Republicans who drifted from the president lost

  Who holds it: President Trump and allies who share his reading of the Texas result

  Trump argues that the losses were not a verdict on him but on candidates who moved away from the agenda that won in 2024. He says Greg Abbott lost Texas because he changed course in the final months of his career and "went back to his original formula," and that Republicans would have won in a landslide had he been on the ballot himself. On this view the lesson for the party is to stay closer to the president's positions, not further from them, and the governors who held their seats did so by running on his record.

  In their words: CBS Austin, quoting President Trump's Truth Social post on the Texas result ↗

• State-specific campaigns beat the national mood

  Who holds it: Governors-elect David Crowley and Gina Hinojosa, Amy Acton and other winning candidates who ran on local issues

  Several winners say their results came from campaigns built for their own states rather than from a national wave. Crowley told Wisconsin supporters that the state is neither red nor blue and that nobody there gets to govern alone. Hinojosa ran what she called a post-partisan campaign on public schools, property taxes and data centers, and Acton broke with her party on girls' sports. They argue that voters rewarded candidates who matched the state's priorities and tone, and that the same approach would have worked in a less favorable year.

  In their words: Associated Press report carried by MPR News, quoting Gov.-elect David Crowley ↗

• Voters rewarded low-tax Republican records where they held

  Who holds it: The Republican Governors Association and its chair, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte

  The RGA, which has not issued an overall statement on the losses, argues through its state-by-state statements that where Republican governors ran on their records, voters kept them. It says New Hampshire voters made the right choice to stay on a path of low taxes under Kelly Ayotte, and it congratulated Jim Pillen, Alan Wilson and Sarah Huckabee Sanders on wins it describes as votes of confidence in Republican leadership. On this reading, the party's governing model still wins when the candidate carries it, and the open-seat losses reflect candidate and turnout factors that will be clearer once counts are final.

  In their words: Republican Governors Association statement by Chair Greg Gianforte on New Hampshire ↗