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United States · Election results history · 1989
Election 1989 Results

Each election opens in its own mode: the forecast before the votes are counted, the live count while races are still too close to call, and the results once every race is decided.

1989 governor election results by state and county

L. Douglas Wilder won Virginia by 0.4 points in 1989 to become the first elected Black governor in U.S. history, and James J. Florio won New Jersey.

2 governor races were held in 1989. Democrats won 2 and Republicans 0.

The closest were Virginia (D+0.4) and New Jersey (D+24.0). 1 governorship changed party: New Jersey to the Democrats.

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Early projection, based on early and incomplete polling: the likely matchups, each weighted by the betting markets' odds of both nominations, not a result. Each county is its 2024 presidential margin moved by its state's projected swing; set a national vote and every state, district and county moves by the same amount from our projection. Colours run in 100 steps from a safe Republican to a safe Democratic margin. Boundaries: US Census Bureau.

About the 1989 governor elections

New Jersey and Virginia elected governors in 1989, the first year of George H. W. Bush's presidency. Democrats won both, helped by debate over abortion after the Supreme Court's Webster decision that summer. In Virginia, Lieutenant Governor L. Douglas Wilder defeated former Attorney General J. Marshall Coleman by about 0.4 points, a margin of under 7,000 votes that required a recount. Wilder became the first Black American elected governor of any state. Pre-election polls had shown him further ahead than the final result, which fed discussion of how voters answer pollsters on race. In New Jersey, Democrat James J. Florio, who had lost narrowly to Thomas Kean in 1981, beat Republican Congressman James A. Courter by about 24 points. Florio's tax increases in his first year in office caused a strong backlash that contributed to his party's legislative losses in 1991 and his own defeat in 1993.

Every race

StateDemocratVotesRepublicanVotesOthersMargin
New Jersey flip James J. Florio1,379,973 (61.2%) James A. Courter838,553 (37.2%) 35,274 D+24.0
Virginia L. Douglas Wilder896,936 (50.1%) J. Marshall Coleman890,195 (49.8%) 1,947 D+0.4

Margin: the Democrat's share of all votes minus the Republican's. Margins are Democrat minus Republican, of all votes. Certified results, from the states' own archives, the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, Heideman (2026) and Algara & Amlani (2021). By county: "As they were" draws each county as it stood on election day; "Today's" shares the old votes among today's counties by area. County boundaries: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5). How these results were checked.

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