2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election
Election of Josh Shapiro as Pennsylvania Governor / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Pennsylvania and lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro defeated State Senator Doug Mastriano by 14.8 percentage points to succeed term-limited incumbent governor Tom Wolf (D). Primaries were held on May 17, 2022. Shapiro won the Democratic nomination after running unopposed and Mastriano won the Republican nomination with 44% of the vote. Mastriano's nomination drew attention due to his far-right political views.[1][2][3][4]
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Turnout | 60.5% | |||||||||||||||||||
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Shapiro: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Mastriano: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Tie: 40–50% 50% No data | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Pennsylvania only voted for President Joe Biden by 1.2% in 2020 and many Republicans were hopeful that they could pick up the governorship. Days before the Republican primary, multiple Republican candidates dropped out and endorsed former congressman Lou Barletta as they believed that Mastriano would lose a general election.[5][6] After his primary win, Mastriano had trouble fundraising, made few media appearances, made multiple gaffes and was accused of antisemitism against Shapiro.[7][8] Shapiro ultimately defeated Mastriano by almost 15 points, a margin consistent with most polls. Shapiro's landslide victory did not come as a surprise to many political pundits, despite many of them predicting a favorable environment for Republicans.[9]
Shapiro scored the largest margin for a non-incumbent candidate for Pennsylvania governor since 1946,[10][11] and his victory marked the first time since 1844 that the Democratic Party won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in Pennsylvania. Shapiro also made history by earning the most votes of any gubernatorial candidate in the state's history, garnering just over three million votes. Austin Davis was elected lieutenant governor, and became the second African-American elected to statewide office in the state's history, following Timothy DeFoor in 2020.
Shapiro's large margin of victory has been widely credited with helping down-ballot Democrats in concurrent elections.