The Iowa gubernatorial election of 2010 was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 to elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, who will serve a four-year term to begin on January 14, 2011. In Iowa the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected on the same ballot. The two major party candidates were first-term incumbent governor Chet Culver, a Democrat, who ran for re-election with first-term incumbent lieutenant governor Patty Judge, and former four-term governor Terry Branstad, who won a three-way primary for the Republican nomination and ran with State Senator Kim Reynolds.