Live results for Kentucky’s governor’s race: Matt Bevin vs. Andy Beshear

Update: Democrat Andy Beshear has won the governor’s race.

Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is among the most unpopular governors in the country. On November 5, 2019, Kentuckians get to decide whether they want to throw him out of office, or give him another chance.

Democrats are banking on Kentucky’s Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear to unseat Bevin. Earlier this year Beshear, who has out-fundraised and out-spent Bevin, led in the polls, but going into Election Day the two are in a dead heat; a mid-October Mason Dixon Line poll showed 46 percent of likely voters backing Bevin, and 46 percent backing Beshear.

Polls close at 6 pm local time (Kentucky spans two time zones). Vox will have live results here, courtesy of Decision Desk.

If Beshear pulls off a win, it could set up a tense term. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers of the state Legislature, and a Republican has replaced Beshear as attorney general; Beshear could be on a lonely Democratic island in a sea of red.

Democrat Greg Stumbo, a veteran Kentucky politician — the former speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives who previously served as attorney general from 2004 to 2008 — is running against a young corporate lawyer and former counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell, Daniel Cameron, for the attorney general seat. Beshear has played a big role in fighting back against Bevin’s policies from the attorney general’s office. Having a Republican take over his seat would be a major blow for Democrats.

Live results, also provided in partnership with Decision Desk, are below:

In many ways, the polls going into Election Day shouldn’t be as close as they are. Republicans have supermajorities in both of Kentucky’s state legislative chambers, and President Donald Trump’s popularity in the state is unwavering. (He won the state by 30 points.) It’s home to McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and all but one of the state’s six House members are Republicans.

But in the last four years, Republicans in the state, led by Bevin, who won handily by 9 points in 2015, have picked political fights that many voters may carry with them to the polls. The Republican governor has threatened to end Medicaid expansion in the state, which could throw hundreds of thousands of people off their health insurance, and cut back teachers’ pensions. Bevin famously said protesting teachers had a “thug mentality,” and were “selfish” and “ignorant.” He’s already signed restrictive abortion bills and pushed for serious budget cuts in a state home to some of the United States’ poorest people.

Bevin and Cameron are trying their hardest to tie themselves to Trump. They know their best shot at winning the state is by making this a national race.

But if Democrats can win this, it will show that Trump’s influence cannot transcend the unpopularity of some of the country’s most conservative leaders.