Republicans are strongly favored to win this governorship

Why we think this

• This state's baseline partisan lean favors Republicans by about 18 points of margin before anything else is considered.
• This is an open seat: the current officeholder (a Republican) is not on the ballot, which tends to make the race more competitive than a defended seat.
• Separately, current public mood in this state specifically is shifting strongly toward Republicans, on top of the structural baseline.
• Independently, the national midterm environment is shifting every race this cycle significantly toward Democrats -- a separate, nationwide force layered on top of the state-specific factors above, not a restatement of them.
• Model confidence held back -- see model details.

Our model prices structure, not candidate popularity. Rob Sand is a two term statewide officeholder and the markets and polls price that record. We tested adding candidate track records to the model twice; both versions failed our out of sample gate, so we publish the disagreement instead of forcing the number.