(The Center Square)—Voters from 36 states across the country will return to the polls to elect their next governors in 2026.
Several governors races are expected to see fierce competition between parties as they battle for control of their states. In other states, like California, primary challenges are likely to determine who will be elected to state leadership.
Out of 36 governors races in 2026, the Cook Political Report ranks five as “toss ups” where “either party has a good chance of winning.”
Here are those races.
Arizona
Incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is seeking reelection in a race that appears to be hotly contested.
Karrin Robson, a former candidate for Arizona governor, and Arizona U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert will face off in a three-way primary election for the Republican nomination. Both Biggs and Robson received endorsements from President Donald Trump in the race for governor.
Robson has run on implementing principles of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce government spending in Arizona.
“While Katie Hobbs misplaces hundreds of millions of taxpayer funds and grows the government, Karrin will shrink it,” Robson’s website reads. “She will streamline operations, prioritize responsible spending, and hold every agency accountable.”
Biggs has focused on border security throughout his campaign so far, with a focus on implementing Trump’s immigration agenda.
Hobbs has made affordability a focus of her campaign, touting her record over the past four years of reducing budget deficits in the state and providing tax cuts to middle class families. She also highlighted her work to order National Guard troops to the southern border.
Arizona’s primary election to determine who Hobbs will face off against in the general election is set for Aug. 4.
Michigan
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited and a crowded group looks to succeed her.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrest, are looking to win the Democratic nomination for the Great Lakes State. They are joined by Democrats Marni Sawicki, former mayor of Cape Coral, Fla., and Chris Swanson, sheriff of Genesee County.
U.S. Rep. John James, former Michigan attorney general Mike Cox and Tom Leonard, former speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, are vying for the Republican nomination to be Michigan’s governor.
Benson, seen as a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination according to recent polling data, has focused her campaign on highlighting past achievements as the secretary of state. She has highlighted past achievements in voter security, reducing government bureaucracy, and reducing costs.
“As Secretary of State, Jocelyn has overseen the highest turnout, most secure elections in Michigan’s history by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” Benson’s campaign website reads.
As frontrunner for the Republican nomination, James has focused his campaign on lowering taxes and healthcare expenses.
“John will audit wasteful DEI programs, eliminate foreign influence in our institutions, and rebuild trust in government,” James’ website reads.
Michigan will hold its primary election on Aug. 4.
Wisconsin
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced in July he is retiring from politics. Evers’ retirement has left a field open for others hoping to fill his post.
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former lieutenant Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong and Milwaukee County executive David Crowley are among a crowded field seeking the Democratic nomination.
In a less crowded race, Republicans in Wisconsin are looking to take back the governor’s mansion as U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, Washington County executive Josh Schoemann and Andy Manske have declared campaigns for candidacy.
Barnes has highlighted past issues from his campaign that he plans to focus on as governor. He focused on using public funding to lower energy costs in the state and expanded voting opportunities.
As Republicans look to retake the Wisconsin governorship, frontrunner Tiffany has touted his past legislative experience and pushed for an end to sanctuary jurisdiction laws in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin will hold its partisan primary elections on Aug. 11.
Georgia
Term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp will end his two-term run as the governor of Georgia and hand the reins off to another candidate in the Peach State.
On the federal level, Georgia is considered a swing state with two Democratic U.S. senators and the state’s preferring Joe Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024. However, on the state level, Republicans have consistently had the advantage.
Several members of Kemp’s cabinet have declared their candidacy for the seat. Attorney General Chris Carr, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger are each vying for the Republican nomination.
President Donald Trump offered Jones his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for governor in August 2025, giving a boost to the lieutenant governor’s bid.
“We’re fighting for election integrity, lower taxes, and to secure Georgia values,” Jones wrote in a post on social media.
Democrats in Georgia are hopeful to capitalize on their wins in the U.S. Senate by flipping the governor’s mansion.
Former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mike Thurmond have all declared candidacy for the Democratic governor nomination.
Lance Bottoms has focused on expanding Medicaid as a key component of her campaign for governor.
“Keisha will work to eliminate income taxes for teachers, crack down on corporate landlords that are buying up houses and making it harder for families to buy a home or afford rent, and she will invest in education so our children have better pathways to success through career training or college,” Lance Bottom’s website reads.
Georgia’s primary election is set for May 19.
Nevada
Incumbent Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is running for a second term in Nevada. With less competition compared to other battleground states, Attorney General Aaron Ford looks to be the Democrat poised to take on Lombardo.
In 2024, Trump won Nevada as the first Republican president to do so since 2004.
Ford has received endorsements from both Democrat U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen in his bid for governor.
Trump has endorsed Lombardo is his reelection campaign.
“As governor, he is fighting tirelessly to Grow the Economy, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Ensure NO TAX ON TIPS, Advance MADE IN THE U.S.A., Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE,” Trump wrote on social media. “Joe Lombardo is SMART, STRONG, AND TOUGH.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
