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Largest share of the vote in gubernatorial elections
From Ballotpedia
(Redirected from All-time best performance in gubernatorial elections)
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This page contains a table listing the largest share of the vote of all time for Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates running in contested elections in each state.[1] It is updated following each November election and was last updated after the 2025 election.
HIGHLIGHTS
| State | Democratic candidate with largest share of the vote[2] | Best Democratic vote | Republican candidate with largest share of the vote[3] | Best Republican vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | George Wallace (1962) | 96.3% | Kay Ivey (2022) | 67.4% |
| Alaska | William A. Egan (1958) | 59.6% | Sean Parnell (2010) | 59.1% |
| Arizona | Sidney P. Osborn (1944) | 77.9% | Jane Dee Hull (1998) | 61.0% |
| Arkansas | Charles H. Brough (1918) | 93.4% | Asa Hutchinson (2018) | 65.3% |
| California | Gavin Newsom (2018) | 62.0% | Earl Warren (1946) | 91.6% |
| Colorado | Billy Adams (1928) | 67.1% | Bill Owens (2002) | 62.6% |
| Connecticut | Abraham Ribicoff (1958) | 62.3% | Hiram Bingham (1924) | 66.2% |
| Delaware | John W. Hall (1878) | 79.1% | Mike Castle (1988) | 70.7% |
| Florida | Fuller Warren (1948) | 83.4% | Ron DeSantis (2022) | 59.4% |
| Georgia | M. Hoke Smith (1906) | 99.8% | Sonny Perdue (2006) | 57.9% |
| Hawaii | Joshua Green (2022) | 63.2% | Linda Lingle (2006) | 62.5% |
| Idaho | Cecil Andrus (1974) | 70.9% | Dirk Kempthorne (1998) | 67.7% |
| Illinois | Augustus French (1848) | 86.8% | James R. Thompson (1976) | 64.7% |
| Indiana | Evan Bayh (1992) | 62.0% | Eric Holcomb (2020) | 58.2% |
| Iowa | Harold E. Hughes (1964) | 68.1% | John Hammill (1924) | 72.7% |
| Kansas | Robert Docking (1972) | 62.0% | Bill Graves (1998) | 73.4% |
| Kentucky | John W. Stevenson (1868) | 81.3% | Ernie Fletcher (2003) | 55.0% |
| Louisiana | Sam H. Jones (1940) | 99.4% | James Madison Wells (1865) | 78.2% |
| Maine | Robert Dunlap (1835) | 61.4% | Horace A. Hildreth (1944) | 70.3% |
| Maryland | William Donald Schaefer (1986) | 82.4% | Theodore McKeldin (1950) | 57.3% |
| Massachusetts | Michael Dukakis (1986) | 68.8% | Alexander Bullock (1866) | 77.5% |
| Michigan | Stevens T. Mason (1835) | 91.2% | Fred W. Green (1928) | 69.9% |
| Minnesota | Wendell Anderson (1974) | 62.8% | Arne Carlson (1994) | 63.3% |
| Mississippi | Robert Lowry (1885) | 99.0% | James Alcorn (1869) | 66.7% |
| Missouri | Warren Hearnes (1964) | 62.1% | John Ashcroft (1988) | 64.2% |
| Montana | Ted Schwinden (1984) | 70.3% | Marc Racicot (1996) | 79.2% |
| Nebraska | Ben Nelson (1994) | 73.0% | Dwight Griswold (1944) | 76.1% |
| Nevada | Richard Bryan (1986) | 71.9% | Brian Sandoval (2014) | 70.6% |
| New Hampshire | Isaac Hill (1837) | 91.2% | Steve Merrill (1994) | 69.9% |
| New Jersey | Brendan Byrne (1973) | 66.4% | Thomas Kean (1985) | 69.6% |
| New Mexico | Bill Richardson (2006) | 68.8% | Susana Martinez (2014) | 57.2% |
| New York | Eliot Spitzer (2006) | 69.6% | Thomas Dewey (1946) | 56.9% |
| North Carolina | J. Melville Broughton (1940) | 75.7% | Jim Martin (1988) | 56.1% |
| North Dakota | John Moses (1940) | 63.1% | Arthur Sorlie (1926) | 81.7% |
| Ohio | Ted Strickland (2006) | 60.5% | George Voinovich (1994) | 71.8% |
| Oklahoma | J. Howard Edmondson (1958) | 74.1% | Mary Fallin (2010) | 60.5% |
| Oregon | John Kitzhaber (1998) | 64.4% | Earl Willcox Snell (1942) | 77.9% |
| Pennsylvania | Bob Casey Sr. (1990) | 67.7% | John S. Fisher (1926) | 73.3% |
| Rhode Island | Philip Noel (1974) | 78.5% | Henry Howard (1874) | 87.5% |
| South Carolina | Coleman Blease (1910) | 99.8% | Robert Kingston Scott (1870) | 62.3% |
| South Dakota | Richard Kneip (1972) | 60.0% | Bill Janklow (1982) | 70.9% |
| Tennessee | Frank Clement (1954) | 87.2% | William Brownlow (1867) | 76.9% |
| Texas | Coke Stevenson (1942) | 96.8% | George W. Bush (1998) | 68.2% |
| Utah | Cal Rampton (1972) | 69.7% | Jon Huntsman, Jr. (2008) | 77.6% |
| Vermont | Howard Dean (1992) | 74.7% | Frederick Holbrook (1862) | 88.5% |
| Virginia | Henry Carter Stuart (1913) | 91.9% | John Dalton (1977) | 55.9% |
| Washington | Clarence Martin (1936) | 69.4% | Samuel Goodlove Cosgrove (1908) | 62.4% |
| West Virginia | Homer Holt (1936) | 59.2% | Jim Justice (2020) | 64.7% |
| Wisconsin | Tony Earl (1982) | 56.8% | John Blaine (1922) | 76.4% |
| Wyoming | Dave Freudenthal (2006) | 70.0% | Mark Gordon (2022) | 78.7% |
Footnotes
- ↑ Our Campaigns, "State Office List," accessed January 12, 2020
- ↑ Excluding unopposed candidates.
- ↑ Excluding unopposed candidates.
