Race Analysis

10/28/14 -- Take the Brown University poll with something of a grain of salt -- it shows a quarter of the electorate undecided. Fung is in this one, but just barely.

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Rhode Island, our nation’s smallest state, is also probably the most heavily Democratic. The switch to Democratic dominance came abruptly in 1935, when the “bloodless revolution” broke the back of the conservative Republican machine that had managed to dominate the state long after it became a minority (Democrats declared the state Supreme Court and other institutions still dominated by Republicans vacant, eliminating the inertia that slowed realignment in most other states). Republicans intermittently controlled the state Senate into the 1950s, but the state House and U.S. Senate seats were almost exclusively Democratic from there on out.

Despite this strong Democratic tilt, Republicans can still win the governor’s mansion, and indeed the Democrats have won only one gubernatorial election since 1984. Republicans typically win by running against the Democratic machine on a reform platform. That formulation proved insufficient in 2010, in part because voters retained the chance to vote for Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican senator who was running as an Independent.

Chafee opted not to run for re-election. Democrats went through a spirited primary between Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras. The fiscally conservative Raimondo emerged victorious, and now faces off against Cranston Mayor Allan Fung. Polls show a tight race, although one suspects that Raimondo will peel off a disproportionate number of undecided voters, given the state’s partisan leanings.