Overview

Unlike our forecasts of the U.S. presidential and senatorial elections, we forecast the states in the 2020 gubernatorial races individually. There are 11 states running a gubernatorial election in 2020: Indiana (IN), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), New Haven (NH), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Delaware (DE), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Washington (WA), and West Virginia (WV). See this website for the code to reproduce our forecasts. Check back for updated forecasts as we get closer to the election!

Final Forecast of the 2020 U.S. Gubernatorial Elections

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on November 1 at 17:30 CST, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. Check back after the elections for an analysis of our forecast performance!


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

 

Our forecast of the vote margins of the gubernatorial elections over time. Since North Dakota and Delaware had no polling data for our first two forecasts, they have been grayed out.

 
 

We posted our final forecast on November 2 at 11:40 CST.


Prior Forecasts

You can access the forecasts that we made for the 2020 gubernatorial elections on earlier dates by clicking the links below to expand the page.

November 1, 2020, 10:30 CST

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on October 31, 17:30 CDT, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. The closest race, Montana, currently has a mean vote margin of 5.57% in favor of the Republican candidate. As such, we now display the numerical value of all the mean vote margins over time so that the actual values can be observed more easily. However, in general, there is not much movement in the forecast outcomes.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

 

Our forecast of the vote margins of the gubernatorial elections over time. Since North Dakota and Delaware had no polling data for our first two forecasts, they have been grayed out.

 
October 31, 2020, 05:00 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on October 30, 17:30 CDT, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. The closest race, Montana, currently has a mean vote margin of 5.69% in favor of the Republican candidate. As such, we now display the numerical value of all the mean vote margins over time so that the actual values can be observed more easily. However, in general, there is not much movement in the forecast outcomes.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

 

Our forecast of the vote margins of the gubernatorial elections over time. Since North Dakota and Delaware had no polling data for our first two forecasts, they have been grayed out.

 
October 30, 2020, 11:00 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on October 29, 18:00 CDT, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. In this forecast, New Hampshire has gone slightly more Democratic while other states remain stable.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

October 29, 2020, 06:00 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on October 28, 11:34 CDT, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. Interesting updates to this forecast are that both Montana and Utah have gone slightly more Democratic than before. However, we still forecast a Republican win in those two states.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

October 25, 2020, 23:47 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we downloaded on October 23, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

October 20, 2020, 05:00 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we gathered on October 18, 2020, at 10:00 CDT, our model forecasts that Delaware, North Carolina, and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. In contrast to previous forecasts, Delaware (DE) and North Dakota (ND) now have polling data, so we are able to provide forecasts of these state races.


 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

October 5, 2020, 22:43 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we gathered on September 28, 2020, at 20:21 CDT, our model forecasts that North Carolina and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. As North Dakota (ND) and Delaware (DE) do not have polling data at this time, we do not forecast those states

 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)

September 21, 2020, 22:00 CDT

Using polling data from FiveThirtyEight that we gathered on September 21, 2020, at 22:00 CDT, our model forecasts that North Carolina and Washington will be a Democratic win. We forecast that the other states will elect Republican governors. In this forecast

 

Our forecast vote margins for each state (lines indicate our 80% confidence intervals)