A line chart showing the percent of states with Senate and gubernatorial races that had held at least one debate between major candidates as of three weeks before Election Day, 2016-2022.
A "major candidate" is considered to be either a candidate from a major party, or a viable third-party or unaffiliated candidate, such as independent Evan McMullin, who is running for Senate in Utah in 2022. Special elections held in November are included. We compared governor’s races from only 2018 and 2022 because they had the same number of elections (36), and 2016 and 2020 saw far fewer elections (12 and 11, respectively), making them less useful to compare with 2018 and 2022.