Oregon’s primary election ends at 8 pm tonight, with results arriving in maddeningly random trickles and gushes in the hours and days thereafter. Here’s what I’m most interested in learning.
Who will face off with Kotek?
Duh. This is what everyone is wondering. The three Republicans with a realistic shot to win tonight and take on Democratic incumbent Tina Kotek are State Sen. Christine Drazan, State Rep. Ed Diehl and former Trailblazer Chris Dudley.
Republicans are fortunate to have three adept campaigners with the combination of financial resources, name recognition and organization to mount serious efforts to represent the party in November. (Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell has run a strong campaign, too, but lacks the name recognition and resources to prevail). Republican primary voters are often presented with unelectable token candidates to stand for statewide office; that is not the case in the 2026 governor race.
A spate of recent polling suggests Drazan has anything from a significant to a tiny lead over the field. In late April, two separate polls conducted by Republican-leaning pollsters showed support for Drazan, who as the party’s nominee in 2022 lost to Kotek by 3.5%, in the mid-30s, with Diehl and Dudley just below 20%.
On May 1, I wrote about one possible shortcoming of polling measuring a race in which there’s a high profile gas tax referendum on the ballot, too:
But what happens if a bunch of people – Republicans in this case – who never or rarely vote DO turn out to nuke the gas tax? They’re probably not even polled, because they don’t vote regularly. So, if anti-gas tax voters tend to prefer one candidate disproportionately over the others, that can swing things in a way no poll is going to predict. This cycle, that candidate could be Ed Diehl, who led the charge to repeal the gas tax and has tied his campaign to that effort. If low propensity voters turning out mainly to vote against the gas tax also decide to vote in the governor race, it seems more likely than not the main beneficiary would be Diehl.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, a new poll by pollster PredictOregon, was released just a few days ago showing Drazan (40.5%) with a slight lead , within the margin of error (3.83%), over Diehl (37.6%). The poll showed Dudley in a distant third place (17.2%). Importantly, the PredictOregon poll, unlike the earlier efforts undertaken before voting had begun, includes people who had already voted. Among voters who had already voted, the Drazan-Diehl margin was even smaller (albeit with a smaller sample size and thus larger margin of error), 39.7% to 39%.
This feels to me like a coin toss between Drazan and Diehl right now. Drazan probably still has a name recognition advantage among likely voting Republicans on account of her having run a well-funded and closely fought general election four years ago. She’s also had considerably more money to spend this cycle than Diehl, and it’s possible her spending advantage will help carry the day.
However, as I mentioned in that piece a few weeks ago, the gas tax referendum Diehl played a central role in putting on the ballot may put him over the top. In my direct experience, gas tax votes can bring voters who don’t usual vote to the, uh, ballot drop box. The Republicans among them won’t likely be counted by pollsters as likely voters because they don’t often vote. Gas tax-fueled Republicans, one would assume, will be more likely to vote for Diehl than the other candidates. That could be what’s helping to push Diehl’s numbers up among voters who’ve already voted, and could mean his support continues to be under-polled relative to the electorate that actually casts a ballot.
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Will the gas tax go down?
Almost certainly, yes. The margin could matter for November, though. A big defeat for the tax (say, by 10 points or more), which was supported most prominently by Tina Kotek but also by every single legislative Democrat incumbent running for re-election this year, will likely find its way into Republican ads this fall painting Democrats as being out of touch with tax-weary Oregonians.
What happens to Republican turnout?
Republicans have a lot more reasons to vote in this primary election than do Democrats. The latter present no viable alternative to Kotek, and Democrat-aligned groups have chosen not to fight for the gas tax, believing it a lost cause. For that reason, any primary turnout margin between Republicans and Democrats won’t tell us much about November. Historic comparisons of GOP turnout could help detect trends, though.
In 2022, when there was a contested GOP governor primary but no gas tax vote, 54% of registered Republicans voted in the primary election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. Any kind of material increase over 54%, particularly with a Republican in the White House (in 2022, Biden was president), would suggest that some combination of the gas tax and/or Republican enthusiasm to defeat Kotek may be in play. GOP turnout sat at 35% Monday, according to pollster John Horvick, with the usual blitz of ballots dropped on election day obviously not yet accounted for.
What happens to SEIU-targeted Democrats?
Public sector unions Service Employee International Union and Oregon Education Association believe Oregon hasn’t gone far enough to raise taxes and spending. So, they, along with union umbrella AFL-CIO and a couple environmental groups, are targeting for defeat incumbent Democrats Sen. Janeen Sollman (Hillsboro) and Daniel Nguyen (Lake Oswego), who the unions believe are insufficiently enthusiastic about their plans for the state.
Challenging incumbent Democrats, who like all elected Oregon Democrats have voted with the unions almost all the time, is a risky move. If the union-chosen challengers win, it will deter other moderate Democrats from bucking the unions, as some did and other toyed with during the gas tax saga last year. If the incumbents win, it would invite Democrats uneasy with the unions’ increasingly radical demands to vote against them.
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