Saturday, October 1, 2022

2022 Midterms: Bang for Your Gubernatorial Buck

We've already looked at where your dollars can be spent most effectively in U.S. House and Senate races.  Today, we wrap things up by looking at Gubernatorial races.

(NOTE: Of course, state legislative races are important, too, as well as other statewide offices like Secretary of State and Attorney General.  I encourage you to do your own research on those races, where horse-race/polling data is much harder to come by)

There are only 8 races which fall in the range of 'lean Democrat' to 'lean Republican' on this list, and I genuinely believe that each of them could go either way.  Yes, Stacey Abrams is trailing Brian Kemp in Georgia, but Georgia Democrats have come through for us before.

You'll notice that this list does NOT include either Florida or Texas.  Yes, Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are horrible, and it would be lovely if they were soundly defeated but --- it ain't gonna happen.  These guys are very good at voter suppression, and for reason which defy comprehension, they remain fairly popular in their states.  FWIW, all three ratings sites rate both races as 'likely Republican' and not 'solid Republican', so perhaps there's still some hope.  If you want to give money to Beto O'Rourke or Charlie Crist, go ahead, but I'm not going to recommend it.

These eight races will give you the best bang for your buck.

Again, these selections were culled from ratings from the following three sites:

And once again, I've listed the races from strongest D lean to strongest R lean, along with the FiveThirtyEight polling average as of October 1, 2022.  Incumbents are in BOLD.

NOTE: The reason for the ??? after Laura Kelly's name is that there are currently five polls listed for the Kansas race, and they're all over the map.  The only two polls showing the GOP candidate with the lead are sponsored by right-wing individuals/organizations, but it's not clear that the polls showing Kelly with a lead can be trusted, either.

FWIW, it appears that the candidates facing the most extreme GOP opponents are Katie Hobbs, Janet Mills, and Tony Evers, in that order.

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