A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Symbiosis, Explained 

Checking In on the Governors

Hard to improve on Geoffrey Skelley’s write-up in FiveThirtyEight on which states might see their governorships flip. With so much focus on the House and Senate, sometimes it’s easy to forget the governors’ mansions—even as we see the power that a Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott has to control the national political conversation. At the end of the day, though, who can really claim victory if Democrats retake Maryland and Massachusetts and Republicans take Kansas, which at this point is still the most likely scenario unless and until David Perdue pulls out a surprise win in the Georgia primary over Brian Kemp … and even then? 

(T)he two most likely seats to flip may be Maryland and Massachusetts, where popular Republican governors are leaving office, and the GOP could end up nominating candidates who struggle to appeal in those deep-blue states. Meanwhile, primary battles in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could also hurt GOP efforts to capture Democratic-held governorships. After all, while gubernatorial races have become more nationalized, voters still show a greater tendency to break from their baseline partisan preferences in these races than in contests for Congress, meaning a poor nominee can still cause the seemingly favored party to stumble.