Rhode Island · Governor

Who is running?

Helena Foulkes (Democratic), Aaron Guckian (Republican), Ken Block (Independent). The margin below is Helena Foulkes minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Rhode Island elects its governor on November 3, 2026. The text describes the state as generally safely Democratic; Republicans have not won a statewide election there since 2006. The state profile records a median household income of 86372.0, a white non-Hispanic share of 0.7 and a college share of 0.373.

The seat has no incumbent on the ballot: Democratic governor Dan McKee lost the September 9 primary to Helena Foulkes, a former CVS executive and 2022 candidate, 62.5% to 37.5%. It is the first time since 1994 that a Rhode Island governor lost renomination, and the text says the primary turned largely on the long closure of the Washington Bridge. The Republican nominee is Aaron Guckian, the 2022 lieutenant governor nominee, who beat Elaine Pelino 50.6% to 49.4%; a recount did not change the result. Independent Ken Block, founder of the Moderate Party, is also running.

Every rater listed calls the race D: the Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Silver Bulletin, though the Cook, Inside Elections and Sabato calls date from 2025, before the primary. The two post-primary polls put Block second: Opinion Diagnostics (September 23–25) has Foulkes 41%, Block 24%, Guckian 19%; the University of New Hampshire (September 17–21) has Foulkes 44%, Block 25%, Guckian 17%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field, so it is not stated whether the model used the statewide polls the text lists.; The margin_for_subject does not say which opponent it is measured against; in the text's post-primary polls the independent, Ken Block, runs second, not the Republican.; The text gives no fundraising figures for any candidate.; The text gives no presidential results for the state and no prior gubernatorial vote shares.; Three of the seven ratings predate the September 9 primary; no rating is finer than 'D'.; Endorsement sections are empty in the text.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 87873f2655e9; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 2.6 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.0 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between +10.0 and +29.6 points. Election day: +8.6 to +32.0. The election-day interval is 3.7 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.40 points, made of race-specific polling error 45%, drift to election day 30%, latent opinion 14%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

6 polls, most recent 2026-09-21. every input is provisional.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Helena Foulkes ahead of Aaron Guckian. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -3.0 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and 1 new poll arrived over this window — so the movement mixes new evidence with changes to the model.

Since 2026-10-01: margin -3.66 points, win probability -0.2 points, on +1 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), +0.00 from the shorter horizon, and -0.00 from the model specification.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run e44a7a28-e123-4ef5-bdf4-5faac33da747 and election-day run 43ce1cca-0cdb-4b50-9b88-21d1f6fa65d4, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.