Connecticut · Governor

Who is running?

Ned Lamont (Democratic), Ryan Fazio (Republican). The margin below is Ned Lamont minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Connecticut elects its governor on November 3, 2026. The state profile on file records a median age of 41.2, a college share of 0.4 and a white non-Hispanic share of 0.6. The text gives no presidential or previous governor's race results.

Democratic governor Ned Lamont, in office since 2019, is running for a third term. He won the state convention 74.6% to 25.4% over progressive state representative Josh Elliott and then the August 11 primary 67.9% to 32.1%, the first primary faced by a sitting governor since Ella Grasso in 1978. The text cites a Morning Consult approval of 63% from October 2025, and a May 2025 University of New Hampshire poll in which 44% said he should not run again. The Republican nominee is state senator Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, who took about 92% of convention delegates; Betsy McCaughey fell short of the 15% needed to force a primary. Erin Stewart, earlier seen as the frontrunner, withdrew amid reports of alleged misuse of a city credit card and endorsed Fazio.

All seven raters listed call the race D, with dates from June 5, 2026 (RealClearPolitics) to September 23, 2026 (Decision Desk HQ). The page's polling average is Lamont 52.0%, Fazio 38.4%, Lamont +13.6%. The latest listed polls are University of New Hampshire (September 17–21, 2026), 55% to 38%, and co/efficient (September 16–17, 2026), 48% to 41%.

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.candidates marks Lamont incumbent: false, but the text says he is the incumbent.; No fundraising figures for any candidate.; No presidential results or previous governor's race margins (e.g. 2022) are given.; The forecast rows carry no basis field, so the brief cannot say what the model rests on.; Rater calls are given only as 'D', with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail.; Fazio's background beyond his state senate seat is not given.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as ff2b2166d511; written by claude-opus-5-5 (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 0.5 points toward the Democrats 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 ±0.1 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 +4.5 and +23.4 points. Election day: +4.8 to +27.5. The election-day interval is 3.8 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.23 points, made of race-specific polling error 47%, drift to election day 31%, correlated polling error 11%, latent opinion 10%. 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?

7 polls, most recent 2026-09-21. 29% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Ned Lamont ahead of Ryan Fazio. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved +1.6 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 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 d2da6f2e-ec33-43f7-b275-0285c1f23a25 and election-day run 025e7d67-911a-40b5-97cd-71d9d09bd538, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.