With the 2018 midterms behind us, Daily Kos Elections has now started calculating the results of the Senate and gubernatorial elections broken down by congressional district. We're beginning in Oklahoma, which hosted an unusually competitive race for governor. As with past cycles, we'll be releasing data after states certify their final results. You can find each state's certification deadlines at Ballotpedia, and you can also find our complete set of data from this and previous cycles at Daily Kos.
While Democrats hoped that outgoing Republican Gov. Mary Fallin's horrific approval numbers would give them an opening in this very red state, Republican Kevin Stitt ended up defeating Democrat Drew Edmondson by a 54-42 margin statewide and carried four of the state's five congressional districts. That was a big drop for Team Red from Donald Trump's 65-29 victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it still was hardly a cliffhanger.
Edmondson's one district-level win came in the Oklahoma City-based 5th District, which he carried 53-44 in a victory that likely had some important local implications down the ballot. That same night, Democrat Kendra Horn unseated GOP Rep. Steve Russell 51-49, a massive upset in a seat that had backed Trump 53-40. This was also the first time that Democrats had won a congressional race in Oklahoma since 2010, when Rep. Dan Boren won his final term in the 2nd District.
While Fallin wasn't enough to sink Stitt statewide, she seems to have done Russell some serious damage. Horn made education one of the centerpieces of her campaign—a major GOP weakness, since budget cuts under Fallin had led to four-day school weeks and a teachers' strike. In addition, Mike Bloomberg's Independence USA super PAC went up with a six-figure TV buy attacking Russell in the final week of the race, hitting him for voting with Fallin to underfund schools while he served in the legislature. It seems to have been an effective line of attack.
Unfortunately for Team Blue, though, the Oklahoma's other four seats stayed reliably red. Stitt's weakest performance among this group was in the 1st District in the Tulsa area, which he still carried 53-44. This was a big drop from Trump's 61-33 victory but still not good enough for Edmondson, and Republican Kevin Hern likewise had no trouble winning an open seat race 59-41 here. Stitt also won GOP Rep. Tom Cole's 4th District, which includes some of the Oklahoma City suburbs and the south-central part of the state, by a similar 53-43 margin. Trump took it 66-28 in 2016, and Cole won re-election 63-33 this year.
Over in Boren's old 2nd District, Stitt won 60-37; Trump carried it 73-23 two years earlier. This seat, which includes the Little Dixie region in the southeastern part of the state, used to back local Democrats in downballot races even as it supported Republican presidential candidates. However, Stitt's big win here is yet another indication that it's become fully Republican across the board. Finally, Stitt's largest win was in the rural 3rd District, which he took 63-34; Trump won it 74-21.