The End of the Gubernatorial Naysayer?

Only four states have elected governors from the opposing party of the sitting president over the last two cycles

Heading into the November elections, Democrats are looking to flip several GOP-held governorships to take control of a majority of these state executive offices nationwide for the first time since heading into the 2010 cycle.

Democrats, who govern 24 states, are eying several opportunities (e.g. Iowa, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Alaska) with an expected national tailwind buoyed by President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings.

Republicans, meanwhile, see Kansas, Arizona, and Wisconsin as their best chances to flip seats in their own right.

The notion that the sitting president’s party might yield some seats to the opposition during midterm cycles is not a novelty.

But with states increasingly demonstrating monolithic partisan tendencies (as established on this site across multiple reports), it has become less common for states to be reliable ‘naysayers’ – voting against the party of the sitting president no matter which is in office.

Through the 2025 election cycle, there are currently only four states whose gubernatorial vote preference was not that of the sitting president’s party in two or more consecutive cycles.

Nevada leads the way at four straight cycles: backing Republican Brian Sandoval under Barack Obama (2010, 2014), Democrat Steve Sisolak under Trump (2018), and Republican Joe Lombardo under Joe Biden (2022).

Virginia is next with three – voting for Democrat Ralph Northam in 2017, Republican Glenn Youngkin in 2021, and Democrat Abigail Spanberger in 2025.

That leaves just Louisiana (Democrat John Bel Edwards in 2019; Republican Jeff Landry in 2023) and New Hampshire (Republicans Chris Sununu in 2022 and Kelly Ayotte in 2024) at two each.

This is in stark contrast to the much larger number of states that tallied gubernatorial naysayer streaks of six or more consecutive cycles well into the 2010s:

• Wyoming (nine): 1982-2014
• Tennessee (eight): 1986-2014
• New Jersey (eight): 1989-2017
• Kansas (eight): 1990-2018
• New Mexico (eight): 1990-2018
• Wisconsin (eight): 1994-2018
• Oklahoma (seven): 1990-2014
• Maine (seven): 1994-2018
• Michigan (seven): 1994-2018
• Arizona (six): 1994-2014

Virginia also had a naysayer streak of nine straight elections (1977 to 2009) to bring their current tally to 12 of the last 13 cycles.

Only three states have voted into office a gubernatorial nominee from the same party of the sitting president during each of the last two elections: Arizona (Republican Doug Ducey in 2018 and Democrat Katie Hobbs in 2022), Maryland (Republican Larry Hogan in 2018 and Democrat Wes Moore in 2022), and Massachusetts (Republican Charlie Baker in 2018 and Democrat Maura Healey in 2022).

Vermont owns the longest such streak in recent years, backing the gubernatorial nominee of the president’s party in 11 consecutive cycles from 1994 through 2014.

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