Overview
- The Cato Institute published the 2026 Freedom in the 50 States report on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, and for the first time it assigned numerical grades to individual governors to show how their actions affected state freedoms.
- New York Gov. Kathy Hochul received the lowest gubernatorial score at 18.02% and an F, while New York state ranked 49th overall with a 31.9% freedom score.
- Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte topped the new governor rankings with a 62.31% A, Colorado’s Jared Polis placed second, and Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’s Greg Abbott also scored near the top with 52.61% and 50.67%, respectively.
- The study converts state laws and gubernatorial actions into 0–100 percentage scores by evaluating fiscal, housing, occupational, education, firearms, speech and medical policies and then aggregating across those categories.
- Cato found a clear partisan tilt with Republicans generally scoring higher and Democrats lower but noted notable exceptions; outlets are using the results as political talking points and there are no reported immediate policy changes tied to the rankings.