Democratic Governor Tina Kotek and Republican state Senator Christine Drazan are locked in a tight race for the Oregon governor's seat, a new poll shows, keeping alive what may be the GOP's best shot this year at flipping a governor's mansion in a state it hasn't won since 1982. Kotek drew 46 percent and Drazan 44 percent in the survey of 549 likely voters, conducted by DHM Research for The Oregonian/OregonLive from September 24 to October 1. Pacific Green Party candidate Brett Smith got 3 percent and 7 percent were undecided.
The margin of error is 4.2 percentage points. It's the first independent poll since spring with Kotek in front, and an internal survey for her campaign has her up 4. Drazan's lead in public polling had been narrowing for months, from 4 points in June to a single point in late September.
John Horvick, senior vice president of DHM Research, told The Oregonian that the trend, the echo of 2022 and four decades of Democratic governors made a late Kotek shift "hard for me to ignore." Still, a Drazan win would be among the stranger results of a midterm cycle that has broken mostly for Democrats. Half of likely voters in an Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) poll released last week said they voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024; 38 percent said President Donald Trump. Kotek's campaign told Newsweek in a statement that voters are turning against Drazan as they learn more about her.
"As voters hear more about both candidates and their values, it is clear that they are seeing Christine Drazan as the out-of-touch, MAGA extremist that she is," Federico Araujo, the campaign's communications director, said. "There's only one candidate who's willing to tackle Oregon's toughest challenges, and voters know that it's clearly Governor Kotek." The Drazan campaign seized on Kotek's poor favorability ratings as proof voters want new leadership. "Poll after poll is showing that Oregonians of all political stripes are fed up with Tina Kotek's failed leadership and finding more and more reasons to support Christine Drazan," Trey Rosser, a campaign strategist, told Newsweek last week.
Oregon is one of the few governor's races where Republicans are on offense in a reliably blue state, and arguably their most realistic shot at a pickup in a year when the party is mostly playing defense. A Drazan win would make her Oregon's first Republican governor since Victor Atiyeh, who won his second term in 1982 and served from 1979 to 1987. It would also end a decadelong statewide drought for the party.
Dennis Richardson's 2016 victory for secretary of state remains the last statewide race a Republican has won in Oregon. Before that, former Senator Gordon Smith was the last Republican to win statewide, in 2002. No Republican presidential candidate has carried Oregon since Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Harris beat Trump there 55 percent to 41 percent in 2024.
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