CHEYENNE, Wyoming — Republican state Senator Eric Barlow, a veterinarian from Gillette who once served as Speaker of the Wyoming House, has been elected governor of Wyoming, winning a three-way race in which the Constitution Party candidate finished second and the Democrat third — a result the Associated Press called on Tuesday, November 3, as polls closed at 7 p.m. Mountain Time. Barlow succeeds Mark Gordon, the two-term Republican governor who was term-limited and ineligible to seek a third consecutive term, and keeps the governor's office in Republican hands in a state his party dominates at every level.
Source: Associated Press election results — Governor, Wyoming
With 206 of Wyoming's 432 precincts reporting and an estimated 64.32 percent of the total vote counted, the AP's tally put Barlow on 86,892 votes — about 68.7 percent — ahead of Constitution Party candidate Rebecca Bextel on 23,058 (about 18.2 percent) and Democrat Kenneth Casner on 16,496 (about 13.0 percent). The shape of that result is itself the story: in Wyoming, the Democrat did not finish second. Bextel, a business owner running on the Constitution Party line, outpolled Casner by 6,562 votes, underlining how completely the state's general-election contest has become an argument inside its conservative majority rather than between the two national parties. Results remain unofficial until the county canvasses and state certification are complete.
Barlow thanked both opponents in a statement reported by the Wyoming Tribune Eagle and laid out a governing pitch aimed squarely at the state's working anxieties: “Wyoming families deserve a government that listens, spends responsibly and delivers dependable service. We have work to do to improve access to healthcare, support our schools and strengthen the industries that sustain our communities. We must protect our water and respect private property rights while creating opportunities for new businesses and investment,” he wrote, adding the line his campaign returned to all autumn: “Above all, we need a Wyoming where our young people can choose to build careers, raise families and make their futures here.”
Source: Wyoming Tribune Eagle — AP calls Senate, House and governor races for Hageman, Gray and Barlow
The primary where Trump's endorsement was not enough
Barlow's road to the governor's office ran through the most instructive Republican primary of Wyoming's year. A long-time legislator who served as Speaker of the Wyoming House before moving to the state Senate in 2023, he won the August 18 Republican primary with 58,820 votes, 45.1 percent — defeating Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, who carried President Donald Trump's endorsement, on 38,739 votes (29.7 percent), and retired Colonel Brent Bien, backed by Wyoming Freedom Caucus figures, on 30,843 (23.6 percent), with Curt Blake on 1.7 percent. Gordon, the outgoing governor, endorsed Barlow in the final stretch. In the state where Trump is most popular, the primary voters picked the legislature's insider over the president's choice by more than 20,000 votes — and the general election was never in doubt from that night on.
The rest of the field explains the general-election numbers. Casner, the Democrat, is a perennial candidate who ran for governor in 2002 and 2018 and secured his party's nomination unopposed with 10,706 primary votes; his 13 percent on Tuesday continues a long run of low-teen Democratic showings in Wyoming statewide races. Bextel's second place, by contrast, is a rare sight in Wyoming politics — a third-party candidate outpolling a major-party nominee in a statewide race — built, as she argued through the autumn, on conservative voters who had backed Degenfelder or Bien in August splitting away from the Republican nominee, though on Tuesday's numbers most of those voters ultimately came home to Barlow.
Source: Townsquare Media / Casper Cowboy — Eric Barlow elected Wyoming governor
The governor in Cheyenne signs off on state highway and transport priorities on the I-25, I-80 and I-90 freight corridors, state energy permitting and bonding, water projects in a state where irrigation and energy compete for every acre-foot, and the state budget for schools and rural healthcare — the two services Barlow named first in his victory statement. For the Punjabi truck drivers who cross Wyoming weekly and the small Sikh community in the state, those are not abstractions: they are road budgets, winter-closure policy and hospital access in the towns along the interstate.
The ballot around him
Wyoming voters were deciding more than a governor on Tuesday. On the same ballot, Republican Harriet Hageman won the state's open U.S. Senate seat, Secretary of State Chuck Gray won Hageman's at-large U.S. House seat, and voters weighed a statewide property-tax proposition that would exempt 50 percent of a primary residence's assessed value from property taxes — a measure aimed at the rising valuations that have squeezed Wyoming homeowners and that helped drive turnout in counties like Natrona, where the clerk reported 8,237 ballots cast before Election Day, well above the county's 2022 early pace. The governor Barlow becomes in January will have to govern alongside whatever tax decision those voters made.
What happens next
The count finishes first: counties complete their canvasses and Wyoming certifies the result in the coming days, a formality given a margin of nearly 64,000 votes with about two-thirds of the vote already counted. Barlow is due to be sworn in on January 4, 2027, when Gordon's term ends, and his first test arrives immediately — the legislative session and a state budget built on energy revenues, with his stated priorities of healthcare access, schools, water and keeping young Wyomingites in the state now meeting a legislature his own party controls but does not always agree with itself in. His primary showed a party arguing about its direction; his general election showed the argument, for now, settled in his favour by a margin no recount will disturb.