Table 1: Crystal Ball gubernatorial rating change
We announced a rating change last week that we’d like to formalize today: We are moving Indiana’s gubernatorial race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. The GOP is still clearly favored there but there’s been enough activity that it doesn’t seem like an average, sleepy “Safe”-rated contest.
After coming out on the winning end of two competitive races in 2012 and 2016, Indiana Republicans cruised to an easy win in 2020. Four years ago, Gov. Eric Holcomb’s (R) 56.5% share was about equal to what Donald Trump got in Indiana. But with an underfunded Democratic nominee, former state Health Commissioner Woody Myers, Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater took more than 11% of the vote running as a critic of Holcomb’s COVID policies. As the right image on Map 1 shows, Rainwater actually got more votes than Myers in 33 of the state’s 92 counties.
Map 1: 2020 Indiana gubernatorial election
With Holcomb now term-limited, Republicans nominated Sen. Mike Braun in their May primary. While sitting senators rarely try to relocate to their state’s executive mansion, it is not unheard of: in 2010, then-Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) successfully pulled it off, while in 2015, then-Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attempted it, but the damaged Vitter ran into something of a buzzsaw as he decisively lost a runoff to John Bel Edwards (D), who would serve two terms in office.
In any case, about a month after the primary, delegates at the GOP state convention in Indianapolis went against Braun—and Trump—by nominating pastor Micah Beckwith over state Rep. Julie McGuire as their nominee for lieutenant governor. Part of Beckwith’s appeal to the grassroots delegates was his image as an outsider; he has never held elected office, and he has criticized Holcomb, who comes out of the state’s more pragmatic GOP tradition, from the right. In the general election, state Democrats are trying to make Beckwith, not Braun, the face of the Republican ticket—among some other controversial comments, Beckwith openly identifies as a Christian nationalist.
Democrats themselves nominated former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick, who held office as a Republican but later switched parties. If this is reminding some of our readers of the 2022 Oklahoma gubernatorial election, it is because in both cases, the Democratic nominees were elected as a Republican to positions overseeing education. Not surprisingly, McCormick has emphasized public education and abortion rights (the state has a strict ban in place).
Rainwater is running again and does seem to have something of a niche following. While we’d expect Rainwater’s share to dwindle this time, considering the Democrats seem to be putting in more effort than they did four years ago, he could draw disproportionately from the GOP gubernatorial vote.
Public polling of the race has mostly shown single-digit Braun leads, although he rarely breaks out of the mid-40s. In late September, polling done for the Democratic Governors Association gave Braun a 44%-41% lead, with Rainwater at 8%. A Democratic source emphasized to us that, at the time of the poll, McCormick had only recently taken to the air hitting Braun on abortion, so Democrats may have more room to grow as their messaging took hold. A poll from ARW Strategies for Indy Politics showed a similar result, with a 44%-37%-9% split in favor of Braun. It may be worth noting Trump’s lead in the DGA poll was 10 points while the ARW poll had him up 16 points—to us, the latter is probably more in line with reality, as it would match Trump’s actual 2020 margin in the state (we always have to offer caveats about private partisan polling released publicly, on either side). Braun also recently attracted some negative attention for airing an ad using digitally-altered images of McCormick supporters holding signs advocating for the banning of gas stoves, a political move we didn’t take as a sign of supreme confidence.
With both the DGA and the Republican Governors Association engaging in this race, we’re changing the rating because Indiana seems to be a more live contest than other “Safe”-rated states on either side. Put a bit differently, Indiana seems to be emerging as Democrats’ best red state offensive opportunity, so it seems to merit a position at the edge of the playing field, even as Braun remains clearly favored.