The 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Michigan. Incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer ran for election to a second term and faced former political commentator Tudor Dixon in the general election.

Whitmer defeated Dixon by a margin of nearly 11 percentage points, a wider margin than polls indicated as well as a wider margin than Whitmer's first victory four years prior. Whitmer won independent voters by double-digit margins. This was the first gubernatorial election in Michigan history in which both major party candidates were women.

In order to appear on a primary ballot for the August 2 Democratic and Republican primaries, candidates must submit between 15,000 and 30,000 signatures in addition to their filing paperwork. These signatures are submitted to the Board of State Canvassers, a bipartisan and independent board that verifies petition signatures. Within seven days of the filing deadline, citizens and organizations can challenge nomination signatures submitted by candidates. Voters are only allowed to sign one nomination petition.

After the filing deadline, the Board of State Canvassers received nearly 30 challenges to nomination petitions. Among them, the Michigan Democratic Party alleged that several Republican candidates engaged in signature fraud with their petitions. This was followed by a report by the Michigan Bureau of Elections, which alleged that 36 paid signature circulators faked signatures and engaged in practices that added fraudulent signatures to other candidate's petitions.

An eight-hour meeting of the Board of State Canvassers reached a deadlock on whether to allow the candidates in question to stay on the ballot. Due to the deadlock, the candidates in question were not allowed to appear on the primary ballot. The rushed pace of the proceedings and the decision were criticized by Common Cause of Michigan, whose policy director suggested that the candidates in question had to plead their cases to the Board of Canvassers days after finding out about the alleged fraud themselves.

Several candidates filed lawsuits appealing the decision. These suits were rejected in the Michigan Court of Appeals. Three candidates appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court, but these appeals were denied.

Organizations

Fourteen people declared their candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. At the filing deadline, 10 candidates submitted enough signatures to appear on the ballot, a state record. However, following challenges by the state Democratic party and other organizations, five candidates were deemed ineligible to appear on the ballot due to alleged fraudulent signatures. Several of these candidates, including former Detroit police chief James Craig and Michael Markey, pledged to appeal the decision to the State Supreme Court. Craig also mentioned that, should the appeal fail, he would still plan to run as a write-in candidate for both the primary and the general election. On June 15, 2022, Craig announced he was launching a write-in campaign for the nomination.