Analysis: Where Democrats Have an Edge in Governors Races

Of the 36 gubernatorial races on tap for 2022, Democrats hold 16 of them and they are favored, to one degree or another, to hold 12 of those in November. The Democrats are also favored to flip two GOP-held governorships, in Maryland and Massachusetts.

Thats the conclusion of our first comprehensive analysis of the gubernatorial races since January.

We already published one article on the GOP-leaning seats, and well follow with a subsequent article on the five tossup contests.

For this article, we classify the governorships as Safe Democratic, Likely Democratic or Lean Democratic.

Some of the states on our list below tend to be solidly blue in statewide contests, but others are generally competitive between the parties, including Maine, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Overall, Republicans control 28 gubernatorial seats, while Democrats hold 22. Our analysis is based on reporting with dozens of political observers in the states, plus national party officials and a look at historical, demographic and polling data.

Below are the five races we rate as Safe Democratic (up from three in January), the four we rate as Likely Democratic (down from five in January), and the five we rate as Lean Democratic (down from six in January).

The Safe Democratic seats are listed in alphabetical order by state. In the Likely and Lean Democratic categories, we've ranked the states in descending order, from most likely to vote Republican to most likely to vote Democratic.