Oregon · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for Tina Kotek
Who is running?
Tina Kotek (Democratic), Christine Drazan (Republican). The margin below is Tina Kotek minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
Oregon elects a governor on November 3, 2026. Democratic governor Tina Kotek, in office since 2023, is seeking a second term against Republican Christine Drazan, the 2022 nominee, in what the text calls Oregon's first gubernatorial rematch since 1978. The state profile on file records a median household income of 80426.0, a college share of 0.4 and a median home value of 454200.0.
Kotek won the May 19, 2026 Democratic primary with 83.6%. Drazan, a state senator since 2025 and former minority leader of the Oregon House, won the Republican primary with 40.5% over state representative Ed Diehl (33.0%) and former Trail Blazers player Chris Dudley (16.9%). The infobox lists Kotek with the Working Families Party and Drazan with the Libertarian Party of Oregon; Brett Smith is running for the Pacific Green Party.
Every rater listed calls the race D: the Cook Political Report (September 10, 2026), Decision Desk HQ (September 23, 2026), Fox News (July 23, 2026), Inside Elections (September 3, 2026), RealClearPolitics (September 20, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 4, 2025) and Silver Bulletin (August 25, 2026). The Silver Bulletin polling average, updated September 17, 2026, has the two tied at 44.9%. The latest poll, DHM Research (September 17–27, 2026, 915 likely voters), has Drazan 47%, Kotek 46% with leaners.
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
Democratic incumbent Tina Kotek is seeking a second term.
Democratic incumbent Tina Kotek is seeking a second term.
Tina Kotek, incumbent governor (2023–present)
She is being challenged by 2022 Republican gubernatorial nominee Christine Drazan.
Tina Kotek, incumbent governor (2023–present)
Christine Drazan, state senator (2025–present), former minority leader of the Oregon House of Representatives (2019–2021, 2025) and nominee for governor in 2022
Kotek won the Democratic nomination with 84% of the vote, while Drazan won the Republican nomination with 41% of the vote.
The Cook Political Report D September 10, 2026 Decision Desk HQ D September 23, 2026
This election will mark Oregon's first gubernatorial rematch since 1978.
Silver Bulletin January 28 – September 9, 2026 September 17, 2026 44.9% 44.9% 10.2% |Tie
DHM Research September 17–27, 2026 915 (LV) ± 3.2% 46%With voters who lean towards a given candidate |47%
alliance1: Working Families Party
alliance2: Libertarian Party of Oregon
Not in the source: The facts list Kotek with incumbent: false, but the text describes her as the incumbent governor.; The forecast rows carry no `basis`, so it cannot be told whether the model uses the statewide polls listed here; its margin (Kotek -2.2) runs against every rater's 'D' call.; Ratings are given as 'D' without Lean/Likely/Safe.; The text has no fundraising figures, no endorsements and no prior gubernatorial or presidential results.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 0c055bfce6d3; 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
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | D+12.3 | D+16.6 | D+6.5 |
A shift of 5.8 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
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 36.2% | 34.0% | +2.2 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 72.3% | 66.3% | +6.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 1.8% | 10.1% | -8.2 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 14.3% | 12.9% | +1.4 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 4.4% | 4.4% | +0.0 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 9.7% | 9.6% | +0.1 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 40.1 | 39.1 | +1.02 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $80,426 | $77,633 | $+2,793 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $454,200 | $314,132 | $+140,068 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 63.4% | 67.4% | -4.0 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 5.4% | 4.8% | +0.6 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 1.9% | 3.0% | -1.1 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 17.1% | 12.3% | +4.8 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 15.4% | 11.1% | +4.3 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 32.9% | 32.1% | +0.8 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 3.9% | 2.6% | +1.3 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 3.1% | 2.9% | +0.2 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.46 | 0.47 | -0.00 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 5.3% | 4.0% | +1.3 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.2 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.0 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.7 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.8 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $70,823 | $70,662 | $+161 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 35.7% | 32.4% | +3.3 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 21.1% | 19.4% | +1.7 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 6.4% | 6.1% | +0.3 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.2% | 4.4% | -0.2 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 5.1% | 3.8% | +1.3 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.8% | 0.6% | +0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 0.9% | +0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.1% | 1.5% | -0.5 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 1.2% | -0.8 pts |
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 -12.9 and +8.3 points. Election day: -8.7 to +15.9. The election-day interval is 3.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 7.79 points, made of race-specific polling error 41%, drift to election day 27%, latent opinion 23%, correlated polling error 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?
4 polls, most recent 2026-09-09. 25% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Tina Kotek ahead of Christine Drazan. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved +4.0 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.
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 423e2e38-d5e5-4a54-b95d-3d3e3e72355f and election-day run 04bbedee-d23e-44c7-8fd7-10b307045158, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.