Daily Kos Elections releases initial gubernatorial race ratings for 2018

Daily Kos Elections is pleased to announce our first set of gubernatorial race ratings for the 2018 election cycle. Thanks to their strong performance in the last two midterm elections, Republicans are defending 26 seats. Democrats, by contrast, are defending just nine, while one independent who won in 2014 with support from Democrats, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, is also up for re-election.

Our full chart rating the competitiveness of each contest is below (with Democratic seats in blue, Republican seats in red, and independent seats in green), along with a description of our ratings categories and an explanation of why we've rated each race the way we have. These ratings are also visualized in the map at the top of this post.

These ratings represent our attempt to forecast the outcomes of this November’s elections, using the best information we have available. As circumstances warrant, we’ll issue changes in these ratings from time to time. To keep up with any changes, please subscribe to our free newsletter, the Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest, which we send out each weekday. And for a comprehensive overview of how our ratings work, please check out our detailed methodology statement.

In brief, here’s how we define each of our ratings categories:

Tossup: Both (or all) parties have a strong, though not necessarily perfectly equal, chance of winning.

Lean Democrat or Lean Republican: One party has an identifiable advantage, but an upset victory is possible for the other party.

Likely Democrat or Likely Republican: One party has a strong advantage and is likely to win, though the race has the potential to become more competitive and an upset cannot be ruled out.

Safe Democrat or Safe Republican: Barring unforeseeable developments, one party is certain to win.

Below are brief explanations of our initial ratings, grouped by category of competitiveness and ranging from most competitive to least competitive. Note, however, that even within each category, not all races are equally competitive: One race in the Lean Republican grouping, for instance, might be on the border of being a Tossup, while another could be closer to Likely Republican.