The governor is the chief executive of each of the 50 states, the most powerful elected official in state government and the single person most responsible for shaping a state's policy direction. Governors sign or veto legislation, set budget priorities, appoint judges and agency heads, and serve as the public face of their state in times of crisis. In a federal system where states serve as laboratories of democracy, understanding gubernatorial power is essential to understanding how policy actually gets made in America.
What Governors Do
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about state executives beyond guaranteeing each state a republican form of government. Every state constitution establishes the governor as head of the executive branch, but what that means in practice varies considerably from state to state. Governors deliver a State of the State address and submit an executive budget, typically the starting point for legislative negotiations. In most states, governors have broad appointment authority over agency heads, board members, and in many cases judges, filling both mid-term vacancies and regular judicial seats depending on whether the state uses appointment or election for its judiciary. Governors also command their state's National Guard when it is not federalized and can declare states of emergency in response to natural disasters, public health crises, or civil unrest.
Every governor has veto power, though North Carolina's governor gained that authority only in 1996, making it the last state to grant it. Most states require a two-thirds supermajority to override, making the veto an extremely powerful check even when the opposing party controls the legislature. The specific override threshold varies, however, and in some states a legislature's supermajority effectively neutralizes the governor's veto power entirely. See our Supermajorities page for state-by-state thresholds and which parties currently hold veto-proof margins. The line-item veto is available to 44 governors, allowing them to strike individual spending provisions from an appropriations bill without rejecting the entire budget, a power the President of the United States does not have.
Wisconsin's Magic Veto Pen
No state provides its governor with a partial veto as powerful as Wisconsin's. A 1930 constitutional amendment allowed appropriation bills to be "approved in whole or in part by the governor," which led to governors effectively rewriting legislation. Voters curtailed the power in 1990 (no striking individual letters to create new words) and again in 2008 (no combining parts of separate sentences), but the core authority survived.
In 2023, Gov. Tony Evers (D) used that authority to extend a school funding provision by 400 years. The Republican legislature had written a school funding increase for the "2023-24" and "2024-25" school years. Evers struck the "20" and the hyphen, converting "2025" into "2425." The legislature sued. In April 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the veto 4-3, ruling that striking numbers is not the same as striking letters under the 1990 amendment. The conservative dissenters were unsparing: "The decision today cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution." The legislature's response: put the question to voters. The Prohibit Partial Veto to Increase Tax or Fee Amendment is on Wisconsin's November 2026 ballot, which would add a new constitutional restriction barring the governor from using the partial veto to create or increase any tax or fee.
Governors also wield executive order authority, directing state agencies and setting policy without legislative action. The scope of this power varies considerably by state, but the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how consequential it can be: governors used emergency powers to impose lockdowns, mask mandates, and business restrictions, decisions that directly affected millions of lives and that courts in several states subsequently reviewed and sometimes overturned. In recent years, executive orders have become an increasingly common tool in divided-government states, where the governor cannot pass legislation but can still shape policy through agency direction.
A governor's effectiveness is also shaped by the partisan composition of the legislature. When one party controls the governorship, state senate, and state house (a trifecta), the governor can advance an ambitious policy agenda with fewer obstacles. When government is divided, the governor must negotiate and compromise, relying more heavily on the veto and executive authority. In states where the legislature draws district maps rather than an independent commission, the governor's veto over redistricting plans can shape the political landscape for an entire decade. Currently, 39 states operate under unified party control, meaning divided government has become the exception rather than the rule.
North Carolina: Weakening the Weak Governor
North Carolina's governor has long been considered one of the weaker chief executives in the country. Its constitution gave the office limited appointment power and, until 1996, no veto at all. North Carolina was the last state in the nation to grant its governor that basic legislative check.
Even after gaining veto power, North Carolina's governor has remained vulnerable to legislative encirclement. After the 2022 elections, Republicans held a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate but fell short in the House. That changed in April 2023, when state Rep. Tricia Cotham (D) switched parties, completing the supermajority in both chambers. The legislature promptly overrode Gov. Roy Cooper's (D) veto to enact a 12-week abortion ban. Cooper's veto, which he had used to block similar legislation for years, was suddenly worthless.
North Carolina's legislature has used lame-duck sessions to strip powers from incoming Democratic governors twice in less than a decade. In December 2016, after Roy Cooper (D) narrowly defeated incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory (R), Republican legislators convened a special session — ostensibly for Hurricane Matthew disaster relief — and within 48 hours passed bills that reduced the number of state employees under the governor's control from 1,500 to 425, required state Senate confirmation for cabinet appointments, stripped the governor's ability to appoint a majority to the State Board of Elections, and removed his power to appoint members to the UNC board of trustees. Courts later struck down some provisions as unconstitutional violations of separation of powers.
The same playbook reappeared in December 2024, when Josh Stein (D) won the governorship. Republicans released a 130-page bill minutes before the House vote; it passed 63-46. The legislation shifted elections board appointments from the governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor, required Stein to fill judicial vacancies from a party-matched list (preventing him from appointing a Democrat to replace a departing Republican judge), and placed new restrictions on the attorney general's ability to participate in lawsuits. Cooper and Stein filed suit before the inauguration; courts have since struck down several provisions as unconstitutional. ProPublica's verdict: "North Carolina's Governor Has Become the Nation's Weakest."
How Governors Are Elected
Almost every state elects its governor to a four-year term. The two exceptions are New Hampshire and Vermont, which retain the older tradition of two-year terms, meaning their governors face voters in every election cycle. This biennial election schedule creates a unique political dynamic: governors in these states must govern with a perpetual eye toward reelection.
Gubernatorial elections are held in even-numbered years in most states, but three states break the pattern. Virginia and New Jersey hold governor's races in the year after a presidential election (e.g., 2025, 2029), often serving as the first electoral tests of a new president's early popularity. Louisiana holds its elections in the year before a presidential election (e.g., 2023, 2027). All three off-cycle elections draw outsized national attention as early indicators of partisan momentum.
Primary Systems
Most states use traditional partisan primaries, where each party selects its nominee separately. A few states use alternative systems:
- California and Washington use a top-two jungle primary, where all candidates appear on a single ballot and the top two advance to the general regardless of party. This can produce two candidates from the same party facing each other in November, essentially settling the race for partisan control in the primary rather than the general election.
- Louisiana uses a similar jungle primary, but if any candidate exceeds 50 percent in the first round, they win outright without a runoff. When no candidate clears that threshold, the top two advance regardless of party.
- Several southern states including Georgia and Alabama require runoff elections if no primary candidate exceeds 50 percent, which can drag out the primary calendar by weeks and deplete candidates' resources heading into the general.
Joint Tickets
In 26 states, the governor and lieutenant governor run on a joint ticket, similar to the President and Vice President. In 17 states, the two offices are elected independently, which can produce a governor and lieutenant governor from opposing parties. The remaining seven states either have no lieutenant governor at all (Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Wyoming) or designate the senate president as lieutenant governor without a separate election (Tennessee and West Virginia), with Arizona electing its first lieutenant governor in 2026 following a voter-approved constitutional amendment in 2022. The distinction matters most when succession is triggered: joint-ticket states produce a smooth, same-party handoff, while independent-election states risk handing the governorship to the opposing party when a vacancy occurs.
Term Limits
The question of how long a governor can serve is one of the most consequential structural features of state government. Term limits directly determine whether a race will feature a powerful incumbent or become a wide-open contest, and open seats are where the real electoral competition happens.
| Term Limit Rule | States | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| No limit (14 states) | CT, IA, ID, IL, MA, MN, NH, NY, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI, WY | NH and VT use 2-year terms instead |
| 2 consecutive terms (25 states) | AK, AL, AR, AZ, CO, FL, GA, HI, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MS, MT, NE, NJ, NM, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN | Can return after sitting out one full term |
| 2-term lifetime ban (6 states) | CA, DE, MI, MO, NV, OK | Cannot seek a third term under any circumstances |
| 1 consecutive term (1 state) | VA | Strictest limit in the nation; must sit out before running again |
| Variations (4 states) | IN, ND, SD, WV | Indiana limits to 2 terms in any 12-year period; others have minor calculation differences |
Term limits are the single biggest driver of open-seat elections. In the 2026 cycle, at least 15 governors are constitutionally barred from running again, and additional governors including Minnesota's Tim Walz (D) and Iowa's Kim Reynolds (R) have chosen not to seek reelection even though they could.
Gubernatorial Succession
What happens when a governor leaves office early, whether through resignation, death, removal, or appointment to a federal position, varies by state but follows a general pattern. In 45 states, the lieutenant governor is first in the line of succession. In the states without a lieutenant governor, the president of the state senate or another officer steps in.
The Succession Chain in Action
The 2024-25 transition period produced two instructive succession scenarios. In South Dakota, President-elect Trump nominated Gov. Kristi Noem (R) as Secretary of Homeland Security. Because Noem's term ran through January 2027, her departure triggered the succession provision: Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden (R), who had run on a joint ticket with Noem in 2022, became governor to complete her term. The joint-ticket structure ensured a clean, same-party handoff, and Rhoden enters 2026 as the incumbent frontrunner for a full term.
Delaware produced a more unusual transition. Term-limited Gov. John Carney (D) won election as Mayor of Wilmington, but his mayoral term began on January 7, two weeks before Governor-elect Matt Meyer (D) would be sworn in. Carney had to resign early, which under the state constitution made Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long (D) the state's 75th governor for that brief gap, despite having lost her own bid to succeed Carney in the gubernatorial primary. Meyer was then sworn in as the 76th governor on January 21.
Succession events can reshape the political landscape of a state overnight. A lieutenant governor who assumes the governorship inherits executive power without having won a gubernatorial campaign, and must quickly establish a governing identity while deciding whether to seek a full term.
The Incumbency Advantage
One of the most striking trends in modern gubernatorial politics is the near-invincibility of incumbent governors seeking reelection. The reelection rate has climbed steadily from 64% in the 1960s to roughly 98% in the current decade:
Source: MultiState governor history database
Since 2020, only one sitting governor has lost a reelection bid: Nevada's Steve Sisolak (D), narrowly defeated by Joe Lombardo (R) in 2022. Governors enjoy high name recognition, command media attention, and can claim credit for economic conditions and disaster response. The increasing nationalization of politics may also play a role: voters seem less willing to punish a governor they know when national partisan identity feels more salient. For the full decade-by-decade breakdown, methodology, and notable edge cases, see our dedicated reelection rates page.
Approval Ratings and Governing Style
Governors as a class are considerably more popular than their federal counterparts. While Congress typically hovers in the 20-30 percent approval range nationally, most governors maintain positive approval ratings with their own constituents, and the best-performing governors regularly reach numbers that would be unimaginable for a U.S. Senator or House member.
Vermont's Phil Scott (R) has held the title of most popular governor in the country for several consecutive years. As of Morning Consult's April 2025 survey, Scott had a 75 percent approval rating and a net approval of +58, a figure that reflects his ability to win 70 percent of the vote in a state that voted for Biden by 35 points in 2020. Scott's durability at the top of gubernatorial approval rankings illustrates a pattern that runs across both parties: some governors sustain genuinely cross-partisan appeal by prioritizing competence and local results over national ideological positioning. Former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R), who each served two terms ending in January 2023, followed the same playbook in blue states, maintaining sky-high approval ratings throughout their tenures despite facing legislatures dominated by the opposing party.
At the other end of the spectrum, governors with poor approval ratings tend to face harder paths to reelection, or choose not to run at all. Iowa's Kim Reynolds (R) was the only governor with a negative net approval in the April 2025 survey, and she subsequently announced she would not seek a third term. Approval ratings are among the strongest leading indicators of whether an incumbent will run again and, if they do, how competitive the race will be.
Why governors poll better than Congress: Unlike members of Congress, governors are held directly accountable for tangible outcomes: road conditions, school performance, emergency response, and state economic health. Proximity to constituents, executive visibility, and the ability to take credit for results that voters can see in their daily lives all contribute to higher baseline approval. The best-performing governors in approval polls tend to be those who govern pragmatically in states where their party is the minority, demonstrating that the office rewards results over partisanship in a way that congressional seats rarely do.
The 2026 Landscape
The 2026 cycle features 36 gubernatorial elections, with at least 18 open seats, the largest proportion of open-seat contests in recent memory. For comparison, in 2022 only 8 of 36 races were open seats, with 28 incumbents seeking reelection. The elevated number of open seats reflects the wave of term-limited governors combined with voluntary retirements: Minnesota's Tim Walz (D) reversed an earlier decision to seek a third term, and Iowa's Kim Reynolds (R) announced she would not run again after her approval rating turned negative. Additional open seats may emerge if other eligible incumbents choose to step aside or face primary challenges.
Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan are the premier battlegrounds: all three feature open governor's seats where either party can realistically win. Control of all three governors' mansions carries trifecta implications, as the legislative balance in each state makes the governorship the deciding factor in whether one party achieves unified control. The incumbents who are running are nearly all expected to win based on the historical pattern, but approval ratings will differentiate: incumbents with strong numbers face minimal risk, while those who have struggled in the polls face genuinely contested races. For detailed race ratings and candidate tracking across all 36 contests, see our 2026 gubernatorial elections page.