PORTLAND – Oregon is a long way from the nation’s capital. There’s about one direct flight a day between Washington, D.C., and the state’s largest city, Portland – a tiny fraction of the number between Washington and Seattle, the closest metropolis to the north.
Oregon is equally distant from the nation’s political conversation: Its solid Democratic leaning in federal races leaves little room for drama – and national media attention.
Oregon wasn’t always a Democratic stalwart. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans – moderate ones like Sens. Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood and Gordon Smith – were ascendant in Oregon. But now, every statewide position is held by a Democrat. In Oregon today, says David Sarasohn, a retired political columnist in Portland, “there are no moderate Republicans.”
The only statewide or federal office currently held by a Republican is one of the state’s six House seats, in a vast district that takes in the rural, conservative eastern portion of the state, a place far in geography – and in political orientation – from metropolitan Portland. In Oregon, a Republican hasn’t won the governorship since 1982, and one hasn’t won a Senate race since 2002. That was also the year the party last won control of either of the state’s two legislative chambers.
To look at a map of Oregon is to view a sea of red – but land doesn’t vote. Instead, each of the state’s four most populous counties – Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas in metropolitan Portland, plus Lane, home of the University of Oregon, in Eugene – backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024 by double-digit margins.
“If you're getting clobbered in the largest counties in the state, it becomes very, very simple math,” Sarasohn says. And as Oregon’s populated areas have grown more blue, its rural areas have become ever more red.
It’s possible to view Oregon as emblematic of the nation’s Trump-era red-blue polarization. But the reality is a bit more nuanced. Oregon voters are, on the whole, strongly unhappy with Trump and his Republican Party. But they are not exactly pleased with the state’s dominant Democratic Party, either.
In presidential races since 2008, Oregon has voted for the Democratic nominee by 10- to 16-point margins. But in the five gubernatorial races during that period, the Republican nominee has come within 1 to 7 percentage points of the Democrat – a much closer spread.
That pattern is holding in this year’s gubernatorial election. Tina Kotek, who spent the better part of a decade as the state House speaker, won the governorship in 2022. Political observers credit her with being an effective inside operator who’s smart and hardworking. They also say she lacks charisma; she’s occasionally been compared to the bloodlessly logical Mr. Spock from “Star Trek.”
Kotek entered office with an ambitious agenda, targeting some of the state’s most urgent challenges, including a shortage of affordable housing and a highly visible homelessness problem worsened by mental health issues and drug addiction in Portland. But such problems are stubborn, and solving them often depends on securing cooperation from private developers and local officials. Oregonians – unlike residents of redder states, such as neighboring Idaho – actually want their government to solve problems, says Randy Stapilus, a journalist who writes about both states. This, he says, sets high expectations – expectations that governors can have trouble meeting.
Perhaps as a result, Kotek’s approval rating has rarely been above water during her tenure in office. Her net approval rating ranks second from the bottom in Morning Consult’s 50-state quarterly gubernatorial comparison. In this context, Oregon’s blue shift coexists with a more moderate undertow, driven by what some here call “compassion fatigue.”
A far-reaching drug decriminalization law was repealed in 2024 after its negative impacts became visible in Portland and elsewhere. A few months later, voters in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, denied renomination to a progressive district attorney, backing his more moderate challenger instead. And in May 2026, Oregon voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have raised the gas tax in order to close a transportation funding gap.
In November’s election, Kotek faces Christine Drazan, a Republican with legislative and campaign experience; she came within 4 points of defeating Kotek in 2022 in a three-way contest. Privately, Democrats are expressing concern that the gubernatorial race is too close for comfort, and the presence of a Pacific Green Party candidate could drain a few percentage points from the incumbent. But Drazan faces a nearly insoluble challenge: sharing a party with Trump, whose approval rating in Oregon is historically low.
However the gubernatorial race turns out, Oregon voters, regardless of party, are expressing their unhappiness. The state’s economy is underwhelming, with chipmaker Intel struggling. Oregon’s job losses between mid-2025 and mid-2026 ranked among the largest of any state, and its gasoline prices in early September were the nation’s fifth-highest, due partly to the lack of in-state oil refineries.
Art Stevenson, a local Republican Party official in Marion County, says Kotek is “the worst governor of my lifetime, bar none.” In an interview at the state fair in Salem, Stevenson says he’s incensed by immigrants in the country illegally receiving sanctuary and public benefits in the state. People in Oregon “don't mind paying for good things. But we hate paying for bad things.” Penny Welch of Portland, another fair-goer, focuses her worries on immigration, too, but from the opposite side. She is motivated by outrage at Trump’s mass deportation policies.
For many Oregonians, political polarization is shaping how they work through such frustrations. “If you're on the left, you're blaming Trump,” says Robert Doyle, a Republican in Salem who founded a local news website. “And if you're on the right, the fault is our governor’s.” That’s not so different from voters elsewhere.
