Oklahoma

Republican Mike Mazzei won the open race for governor over Democrat Cyndi Munson, 51.9% to 45.9%.^{1, 2} Republican Kevin Hern won the Senate race by 17.9 points over Democrat N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas. Republicans won all seven of the other statewide offices on the ballot, from lieutenant governor, where T. W. Shannon won by 15.6 points, and attorney general, where Jon Echols won by 10.7, to the corporation, insurance and labor commissioners and the superintendent of public instruction. Republicans had held every one of them. They also kept all five U.S. House seats, two of them narrowly: Stephanie Bice won the 5th District by 1.3 points, in a district Trump carried by 17.7, and Mark Tedford won the 1st by 4.6, where Trump’s margin was 21.4.

Trump carried Oklahoma by 34.3 points in 2024. Set against that, the Senate race moved 16.4 points toward the Democrats and the governor’s race 28.3. Republican candidates for the U.S. House won the statewide House vote by 17.0 points, against 34.1 in 2024. The governor’s race, the most-voted contest, drew 1,120,930 votes in our count, 97% of the 2022 midterm turnout and 72% of the 2024 presidential vote. The drop fell mostly on one side: Thomas drew 88 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here, and Hern drew 62 for every 100 of Trump’s.

The Oklahoma City area, which casts 36% of the vote, moved furthest, 16.8 points, from R+18.1 to R+1.3, close to an even split. The Tulsa area, with 27% of the vote, went from R+28.9 to R+14.0. The small towns and rural counties, 32% of the vote, moved least, 14.2 points, and stayed Republican by 41.4.

Oklahoma County, in the Oklahoma City metro area, is the larger of the two counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for the Democrat in this year’s Senate race. It went from R+1.7 to D+13.6 on 228,519 votes, 20% of the state’s total. In the governor’s race Munson carried it by nearly 25 points while losing statewide, The Frontier reported.³ The other county to cross over was Cleveland County, in the same metro area, which went from R+14.9 to D+1.1. Tulsa County came within 1.3 points of joining them, from R+15.2. The widest swing was in Canadian County, in the Oklahoma City metro area, which moved 20.5 points and still voted Republican by 19.9. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Republicans keep the governorship and large majorities in both chambers.¹ The change was in the state House, where Democrats gained more ground than in any election in more than two decades, KGOU reported.⁴ Our count could not read every legislative district. MultiState’s count has the House at 75 Republicans and 26 Democrats, from 81 and 20, and The Frontier also has Republicans at 75 of 101 seats.^{2, 3} Four of the six Democratic gains came from defeating incumbents in the Oklahoma City area; a fifth was in Tulsa, where District 75 was decided by 542 votes, and the sixth was an open seat in Comanche County, won 50% to 49%.³ Senate Democrats kept all eight of their seats.⁴ News 9 has Republicans at 39 of 48 Senate seats with one vacancy; MultiState has them at 40.^{1, 2}

The House margin matters for one threshold. The constitution lets a vetoed bill become law with two-thirds of the members elected to each chamber, and keeps a three-fourths vote for emergency bills.⁵ At 75 seats Republicans remain above two-thirds and fall one short of three-fourths, which The Frontier reports they also need to pass revenue-raising bills without a statewide vote; they had 81 before the election.^{2, 3, 6} House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said in a statement that the results reaffirmed a Republican supermajority in the House.⁴ The Legislature draws congressional and legislative districts, and Republicans kept both chambers.^{1, 7} The secretary of the State Election Board, by law the secretary of the state Senate, runs elections; Paul Ziriax has held the post since 2009, and the governor appoints the board’s members from lists the two largest parties supply, with the Senate’s consent.⁸

“Like, here’s how we make life more affordable, and here’s how we can change the tax code to get more high-paying jobs,” Mazzei said in a News 9 interview published November 6. The station reported that he believes a no-income-tax day and abolishing property taxes for seniors and veterans will draw business to the state, and that he will require every state agency to send him a financial report every 90 days.⁹

A constitutional amendment the Legislature sends to voters takes a majority of those voting on it.^{10, 11} Both state questions failed. State Question 845 would have removed the Judicial Nominating Commission’s partisan requirements, changed who selects its members and let them serve consecutive terms; it drew 27.5% yes.^{4, 12} State Question 847 would have lowered the state’s caps on yearly property tax growth, 3% for homestead and agricultural property and 5% for other real property, by more than a point each beginning in 2027, and drew 45.7%. The mayors of Tulsa and Oklahoma City opposed it.^{4, 13}

Oklahoma County voters rejected a sales tax to build and run a new county jail, with more than 62% voting no, on the same day the county voted Democratic for Senate. Voters had approved a $260 million bond for the jail in 2022; KGOU reports the jail is now estimated to cost about $860 million, and the tax would have filled the shortfall.⁴ In Yukon, voters elected Joe Phillips mayor in a recall election with more than 80% of the vote.^{4, 14} Oklahoma City had re-elected Mayor David Holt in February, and the state’s boards of education held their 2026 elections in February and April, not on November 3.^{15, 16}

Republicans kept all 14 of the seats they held, the closest of them the 5th District by 1.3 points and the 1st by 4.6. The other three Republican House winners won by double digits, Josh Brecheen by 39.0 points in the 2nd. In the Senate race 75 of the state’s 77 counties voted Republican, and the small towns and rural counties, 32% of the vote, stayed Republican by 41.4 points. Republicans kept two-thirds of both chambers, enough to override a veto without a Democratic vote.^{1, 5}

Hern takes his Senate seat as soon as the results are certified, without waiting for January, to finish the rest of Markwayne Mullin’s term, KGOU reported, citing an attorney general’s opinion.⁴ The next Senate seat on the ballot, in 2028, is Republican James Lankford’s, in a state that voted R+34.3 for president in 2024 and R+17.9 in this year’s Senate race. The governor serves a four-year term and no one may serve more than eight years in all, so the office Mazzei won is next on the ballot in 2030.⁵