Incumbents hold the line for their parties in 2014 state executive elections

November 7, 2014

By Nick Katers

Voters overwhelmingly returned incumbents to office in state executive races up and down the ballot in 2014. Of the 225 seats covered by Ballotpedia, 150 incumbents appeared on the general election ballot on November 4. Five challengers were able to oust incumbents and flip seats to the opposing party, leading to a 3.3 percent partisan switch rate among seats contested by incumbents. In other words, 96.7 percent of state executive incumbents who sought re-election on November 4 were returned to office.

There were a total of 22 seats or 9.8 percent of the 225 offices covered in 2014 that switched parties. This figure included 17 seats flipped to a new party where incumbents did not appear on the general election ballot. In these races, incumbents were either not seeking re-election, were unable to run due to term limits, or were defeated in primaries. Four races were not called at the time of publication, with challengers leading incumbents in the race for Alaska governor and lieutenant governor. The following chart details the five state executive seats where challengers defeated incumbents in 2014.

State executive turnover
State	Office	Incumbent	Incumbent party	Winning candidate	Winning candidate party	Margin of victory
Illinois	Governor	Pat Quinn		Bruce Rauner		5%
New Mexico	Public Lands Commissioner	Ray Powell		Aubrey Dunn		0.4%
New Mexico	Public Regulation Commission, District 5	Ben L. Hall		Sandy Jones		1.6%
Pennsylvania	Governor	Tom Corbett		Tom Wolf		9.8%
Pennsylvania	Lieutenant Governor	Jim Cawley		Mike Stack		9.8%

See also

• State executive official elections, 2014
• Preview of 2014's most competitive gubernatorial races
• Preview of 2014's most competitive down ballot state executive races

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