Kansas · Governor

Who is running?

Cindy Holscher (Democratic), Ty Masterson (Republican). The margin below is Cindy Holscher minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Kansas elects its governor on November 3, 2026, for an open seat: Democratic governor Laura Kelly is term-limited. The text describes a state with a tradition of ticket-splitting, where Democrats have held the governorship for most years since the late 1960s while Republicans dominate federal and legislative offices; Trump won it by a double-digit margin in 2024, and it is the only such Democratic-held governorship up this cycle. Kelly won in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022; no margins are given. The state profile on file gives a non-Hispanic white share of 0.7 and a Hispanic share of 0.1.

In the August 4 primaries, state senator Cindy Holscher won the Democratic nomination with 48.6% over Ethan Corson's 38.8%, with state representative KC Ohaebosim as running mate. Kansas Senate president Ty Masterson won the Republican nomination with 43.2% over Philip Sarnecki's 22.4% and five others, with state senator Jeff Klemp as running mate; former governor Jeff Colyer withdrew and endorsed him.

The text renders most raters' calls only as "flip": the Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, Inside Elections, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Silver Bulletin, with RealClearPolitics at Tossup. Recent polls: Wedgewood Polls (September 22–24, 2026) Masterson 52%, Holscher 48%; Emerson College (September 15–16) Masterson 51%, Holscher 44%; co/efficient, a Republican firm (September 8–10), Masterson 51%, Holscher 43%; Global Strategy Group, a Democratic firm (August 13–16), Holscher 47%, Masterson 46%. The aggregate average is Masterson +7.2.

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: Rater calls are rendered as "flip" without direction or strength (the rating template was lost), so the actual Lean/Likely/Tossup categories are not known.; No fundraising figures in the text.; No vote margins for Kelly's 2018 and 2022 wins or for the 2024 presidential result.; The facts give no forecast basis, so it is not known whether the model uses the statewide polls in the text.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as a6bf1061bbf6; 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 5.8 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 ±0.2 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 -23.1 and +12.2 points. Election day: -21.9 to +15.8. The election-day interval is 2.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 11.53 points, made of latent opinion 65%, race-specific polling error 19%, drift to election day 12%, correlated polling error 4%. 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?

3 polls, most recent 2026-09-16. 67% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Cindy Holscher ahead of Ty Masterson. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved +1.5 points. There were 6 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.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

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 87023fb3-370e-41d4-aae7-e69d09fc9642 and election-day run cc2a06a9-d160-4159-bb35-4423ab67abeb, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.