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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.
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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.
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Republicans Eye a Historic Oregon Comeback
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.
The window to change the race is closing fast. County officials begin mailing ballots for the November 3 election next week, and Oregon votes entirely by mail.
What Polls Have Shown So Far
Early in the year, Kotek looked safe. An FM3 Research poll sponsored by Charlie Health had her 10 points ahead of former NBA player Chris Dudley, then running in the Republican primary, 45 percent to 35 percent.
By mid-May, the race was even, at 45 percent apiece in a Hoffman Research Group poll for Dudley's campaign. Drazan's own pollster, Public Opinion Strategies, put her up 48 percent to 44 percent in late June.
DHM Research has handled the three latest independent surveys: Drazan up 2 for the business group Grow Oregon in early September, up 1 for OPB later that month and now Kotek up 2. Average them and both candidates land around 45 percent, with every result inside its margin of error.
A poll for Kotek's campaign shows her with a bigger lead. The GBAO survey of 800 likely voters, taken October 1 to October 4, had the governor at 46 percent and Drazan at 42 percent, with Smith at 6 percent and 6 percent undecided. Like Drazan's June poll, it was paid for by one of the campaigns.
Horvick said the movement could come from Democrats who dislike Kotek but won't back Drazan and are settling on the governor as Election Day approaches.
In 2022, Drazan also led some polls late in the race before Kotek pulled ahead and won 47 percent to 43.5 percent, in a three-way contest that included unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson.
The Cook Political Report moved its rating to "Lean Democrat" in September, describing Oregon as one of the rare races drifting toward Republicans this cycle. Sabato's Crystal Ball has it at "Likely Democrat."
What to Know About Oregon's Governor Race
The race is a rematch of 2022. With no third candidate splitting conservative and centrist votes this time, Drazan has spent more time in the state's population centers.
Neither candidate is especially popular. In the Oregonian poll, 39 percent of respondents had a positive impression of Drazan and 47 percent a negative one. Kotek fared worse, at 36 percent positive and 60 percent negative.
The electorate splits along familiar lines. Kotek led 56 percent to 33 percent in the Portland area and did better with women and college graduates. Drazan ran stronger with men and voters without a college degree.
The reasons voters gave for rejecting each candidate mirror the campaigns' own messages. Democrats and liberals who would not commit to Kotek most often cited her record and a lack of accomplishments. Republicans and conservatives who would not back Drazan most often cited opposition to the GOP and its allies.
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Undecided voters lean toward Drazan's issues. Among the 41 undecided respondents, 30 percent named the economy as Oregon's most important problem and 27 percent named homelessness, both well above the overall sample.
The OPB poll found voters sour on the state's direction. Only 29 percent said Oregon is headed the right way, while 58 percent said it is on the wrong track and 73 percent rated the state's economy as poor. Yet 69 percent described their own finances as good, a gap that points to frustration with state government more than with household budgets.
Asked to name the state's top problem, OPB respondents most often cited cost of living at 18 percent, followed by high taxes at 16 percent, homelessness at 13 percent and poor leadership at 11 percent.
Oregon voters also give Republicans an edge on the economy, despite the party's national headwinds on the issue. Forty-four percent said they would prefer a conservative governor to handle it, compared with 32 percent who wanted a liberal one. The numbers reverse on social issues, 42 percent to 37 percent, and Kotek has leaned on abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights in her campaign.
Kotek Aims to Tie Drazan to Trump
Kotek has made tying Drazan to Trump the center of her campaign. The polling suggests the strategy has limits, even in a deep-blue state.
In the OPB survey, Trump was viewed favorably by 37 percent of likely voters, 1 point behind Kotek at 38 percent. Sixty-three percent viewed the president negatively, compared with 60 percent for the governor.
The contrast was on display at the candidates' first debate on October 1 at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Kotek invoked the president 13 times, according to Willamette Week. Drazan accused the governor of "pushing everything off on the federal administration" and kept returning to housing, schools and costs.
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Drazan also distanced herself from one of the president's most unpopular moves in the state. "Let me be clear, I don't want National Guard troops in Oregon," she said during the debate.
Her record on the issue is mixed. When Trump moved to send the National Guard to Portland last year, Drazan, then the House Republican leader, blamed state and local leaders for allowing "violent mobs and domestic terrorists" to assault federal agents at the city's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Weeks later, a House Republican spokesperson said she opposed deploying Guard members from other states, then asked to retract the statement.
The race has drawn neither a Trump endorsement nor significant spending from the Republican Governors Association, a contrast with 2022, when the group treated Drazan as a priority pickup.
Data Centers and AI
The fight over artificial intelligence infrastructure has become one of the race's sharpest flashpoints. Oregon ranks among the top 10 U.S. markets for data centers, according to Pew Research.
On September 3, Drazan released an ad accusing Kotek of giving data centers $1 billion in tax breaks while raising taxes on Oregonians by more than $6 billion. Democrats answered by branding her "Data Center Drazan," and Kotek has hit her for voting against the POWER Act, a 2025 law requiring tech companies to pay higher electricity rates to cover data centers' energy use.
Within days, both candidates hardened their positions. Kotek appeared at an anti-data center rally in Salem and backed a moratorium on new facilities. Hours later, Drazan said she also supported an immediate pause, weeks after telling OPB she did not support ending existing tax breaks for the industry.
Voters care about the issue more than they rank it. Only 2 percent of OPB respondents named data centers or AI as the state's top problem, yet 72 percent said the candidates' positions on data centers would matter to their vote. A July DHM poll found 71 percent of Oregonians view data centers negatively.
*Newsweek'*s AI Policy Scorecard, which rates members of Congress from 1, or AI Skeptic, to 5, or AI Booster, gives Oregon's eight-member delegation an average score of 2.5. The only member on the Booster side is Republican Representative Cliff Bentz, at 3.6, whose eastern Oregon district includes Umatilla County, home to about a fifth of the state's data centers.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Edward T. Cummins
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