In his concession speech on Thursday, Mr. Bevin thanked his staff, trumpeted the successes of his term and wished the best to Mr. Beshear, the son of a former two-term Democratic governor. He concluded his speech by criticizing the voting process as insufficiently transparent in the age of electronic voting machines, and continued to maintain that there had been improprieties in the election, just not enough to affect the outcome.

As it happened, Mr. Beshear’s margin of victory remained unchanged after the recanvass, according to the secretary of state: 5,136 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast.

Mr. Beshear delivered a sort of second victory speech after Mr. Bevin’s concession. He began by thanking the governor but also made remarks clearly meant to differentiate his style from Mr. Bevin’s.

“I believe that we can change the tone as we have seen it in Frankfort,” he said, “that we can be an example not just for the state but maybe even for the nation on how we can move forward on areas that we can agree on and how we can civilly disagree on areas that we might not have common ground.”

Though his final words were largely positive, Mr. Bevin had kept up his pugnacious style to the last days. At a conservative youth conference this past weekend in California, he talked about people who aim “to hijack our political process,” who are talking of Russia collusion while “at the back gate robbing us blind.” He denounced electronic voting as unaccountable and spoke ominously of voting by noncitizens and dead people — “multiple times even.”