United States gubernatorial elections, 1981

United States Gubernatorial elections, 1981

November 3, 1981

Governorships of NJ, NMI, and VA

	Majority party	Minority party

Party	Democratic	Republican
Last election	27 governorships	23 governorships
Seats before	27	23
Seats after	27	23
Seat change

Republican pickup

Democratic pickup

The United States gubernatorial elections of 1981 were held on November 3, 1981 in two states, New Jersey and Virginia. Both seats were open due to term limits and both also switched parties resulting in zero net change for both parties.

Election results

State	Incumbent	Party	Result	Opposing Candidates
New Jersey	Brendan Byrne	Democratic	Term-limited, Republican victory	Thomas Kean (Republican) 49.5% James Florio (Democratic) 49.4%^[1]
Virginia	John N. Dalton	Republican	Term-limited, Democratic victory	Chuck Robb (Democratic) 53.6% Marshall Coleman (Republican) 46.4%

↑ The original election results were close; Florio called for a recount. The results here are from the recount.

Recent United States gubernatorial elections

1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

See also: House Senate Presidential List of current Governors