Tag Archives: West Virginia

Election Night Preview — Part I — Pre-Prime Time

The U.S. is somewhat unique among major democracies in having national elections run by state governments (which in turn mostly delegate the actual running of the election to local governments).  While Congress has set a uniform election day for federal offices (including the election of presidential electors) and most states have decided to hold state and county elections at the same time, each state gets to choose the time when polls close in that state.  In other countries, there is either a uniform closing time (mostly in countries with a single time zone) or polls close at the same local time (creating a gradual move from east to west with additional polls closing every hour).  The result in the U.S. is that rather than a stately progression, you have something of a zig zag.

But this zig zag process creates a rolling story for election night (and creates a way for us to break down what to look for on election night.  In this (and following posts), I will designate poll closing times by local and Eastern Daylight times.

Putting to the side the territories, polls start to close at 6:00 p.m. Eastern (which is also 6:00 p.m. local time) in the parts of Kentucky and Indiana in the Eastern Time zone.  These two states are deep red and very gerrymandered.  In other words, there should be nothing to see in these two states.  Indiana has an open Senate seat as the current Senator is running for governor and one of the Republican representatives is running for the Senate seat.  But this state is not on any body’s list of states likely to flip even though the candidate the Republicans nominated for lieutenant governor is extremely controversial (which could make the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor closer than it otherwise would be).  And none of the House seats in the Eastern time zone are competitive with the closest race having a PVI of R +11.  The only seat worth watching in Indiana’s first district which is mostly in the central time zone.  That district is only D+3, but the Republican candidate is viewed as a long shot.  The early votes are in the more Republican half of the district.  So the first hour or so of return may make the race look close, but, by the end of the night, the Democrat should be up by 10% or more.  In Kentucky, there are no Senate races or state races and the two closest races are +9 PVIs.    In other words, if anything is happening with the House seats in either state or the statewide races in Indiana, that could be a sign that polls are very off.  The most significant races in these two states are two ballot questions in Kentucky.  One is a “throw red meat to the base” proposal to ban voting by non-citizens (which is already illegal).  The other would allow public funding for private schools (which would include religious schools). Continue Reading...

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2024 Primaries — Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia

One of the features/bugs of American politics is that states get to pick the dates of their primary elections.  While there are reasons to want an early presidential primary, there are reasons wo want a later date for the primaries for other offices.  As a result, in the early part of the presidential primary process, you have a mix of states which have a unified (president and other races) primary and states which are having a separate presidential primary.  But those states which wait until May or June for their presidential primary are more likely to have a unified primary.

This week, we have unified primaries in three states.  (There are also runoffs in North Carolina, but most of the significant races will not have a runoff.)  As listed in the title, the three states with unified primaries this week are Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia.

Starting with Maryland, the national Republican leadership has struggled for several cycles in their efforts to get their preferred candidates to run.  However, in Maryland, they succeeded.  Larry Hogan, the former governor who was term limited in 2022, opted to run for the Senate.  As of May, Hogan’s personal popularity is making him a strong contender to take this Senate seat.  Part of the fall campaign message from the Democrats in Maryland will be that a vote for Hogan is a vote to let Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, and Mike Lee run the Senate.  Because the incumbent Democrat, Ben Cardin, is not running for reelection, the Democrats have a competitive primary.  The two major candidates are Angela Alsobrooks who is the County Executive from Prince George County (the D.C. suburbs) and Congressman David Trone.  Ms. Alsobrooks is the more progressive of the two candidates.  The issue for Democratic voters is do they vote for the candidate who will excite the base but who might have trouble winning swing voters (Alsobrooks) or the candidate who is more likely to compete for swing voters but will have trouble exciting the base (Trone). Continue Reading...

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A Manchin-less Senate

This week, Senator Joe Manchin (I/D — WVa) announced that he would not be running for re-election.  If Senator Manchin does not end up on the “Let’s split the anti-Trump vote” “No Labels” ticket, this decision is both positive and negative for what Democrats might be able to do in the 2025-26 Congress.

To paraphrase a saying attributed to Karl Rove, progressive want to nominate the most progressive candidate that can win a general election.  In West Virginia, Joe Manchin might just have been the most progressive candidate that Democrats could nominate and still have a chance at winning.  His name recognition and reputation allowed him to win a state in which the average Democrat has hoping to receive 40-45% of the vote in the general election.

Is it possible that, one day in the future, Democrats could be competitive in West Virginia again?  Yes.  But, in one crucial way, West Virginia resembles the pre-Civil War South.  In today’s West Virginia, coal mining is a key industry.  While only 2% of the state directly works in coal (like only a tiny percentage of Southerners owned slaves), coal is the second largest industry (beyond the health sector) based on GDP generated.  In many parts of the state, if coal mining stopped tomorrow, there would be significant job losses in many areas of the state which would also cause retail and service industries to decline in those areas.  And the number who see their livelihood as tied to coal is a large enough percent to make the pro-coal vote a significant block in West Virginia elections.  This puts Democrats in a bind.  It is essential for the nation and the world for the U.S. to reduce its reliance on coal.  But recognizing and acting on this necessity hurts Democrats in West Virginia.   As such, the reality is that without Joe Manchin running, it is almost certain that Democrats will lose the Senate race in West Virginia.   And given how close the Senate is currently divided, the loss of this seat will make it harder for Democrats to have a majority in the Senate after the 2024 election. Continue Reading...

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Georgia Runoff

The last election of 2022 will conclude on Tuesday with the runoff election for U.S. Senator in Georgia.    While there are still some races that will go to recounts, all of the statewide and congressional races seem to be outside the margin at which a recount could make a difference.  (There are three races with margins between 500 and 600 votes — Arizona Attorney General, California Thirteenth District, and Colorado Third District.  In the Minnestoa Senate recount in 2008, the net swing from the original results to the recount results was 450 votes with an additional 87 votes gained in the election contest.  The closest of the three races going to recount is 511.   While other recounts have resulted in bigger swings, they were in races with bigger margins and Minnesota remains the largest swing that changed the results of a race.

The significance of the Senate race is not quite as big as it was in 2021 due to the Republicans apparently taking the House (but the Republican’s inability to reach a consensus on the next Speaker will be the subject of a future post) and the fact that the Democrats already have 50 seats.  But the result still matters for five key reasons.

First, the additional seat will alter the composition of committees.  With a 50-50 Senate, the committees are evenly divided.  While the rules currently allow a bill or nomination to proceed to the Senate floor on a tie vote, a 51-49 Senate would result in the Democrats having a majority on the committees. Continue Reading...

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The Midterms — Preview (Part 1)

We are into the home stretch of the campaign.  This election comes down to those who want to protect women’s rights, LGBQT rights, our democracy, the middle class, and the safety of our streets on one side against those who want to undermine the concept of free and fair elections and impose an authoritarian theocracy on the other side.  The midterm elections are more like parliamentary elections in other countries.  There is no national race and winning is about the results of multiple state and local races.

As in 2020, there is expected to be a large number of votes by mail.  Some states have changed their laws to allow counting of mail-in ballots to start earlier, but some still require the process of verifying and counting mail-in ballots to begin on election day.  So there will be some states in which the Republican candidate will take an early lead based on the in-person votes, but the Democrat candidate will close that gap (and potentially take the lead) as the mail-in votes are counted.  On the other hand, in states that announce mail-in and early voting results first, the opposite will occur.

These previews will go in the order of poll closing times.  In states that are in two time zones, some states will release results as polls close.  Others will hold off on releasing results until all polls close.  If I know that a state holds off until all polls close, I will put the state in the time when the last polls close.  Otherwise, I will put the state in when the majority of the polls close.  I will list the time by Central Standard Time as that is my time zone.  For ease of conversion, CST is UTC +8 (i.e. it is 8 p.m. UTC when it is noon CST), Atlantic ST +2 (2 p.m AtST for noon CST), Eastern ST +1 (1 p.m. EST for noon CST),  Mountain ST -1 (MST 11:00 a.m. for noon CST), Pacific ST -2 (PST 10 a.m. for noon CST), Alaska ST -3 (9 a.m. AkSt for noon CST) and Hawaiian ST -4 (8:00 a.m. HST for noon CST). Continue Reading...

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Redistricting — West Virginia

Redistricting in West Virginia will probably be a very simple process.  Currently, all three districts run east to west with the First District being in the northern part of the state, the Second District in the central part of the state, and the Third District being in the southern part of the state.  Even though the Second District has the most population, it will probably be split in two.  The exact lines will probably depend on influence of the current members.  Obviously, both of the incumbents in the First (the most senior member of the delegation) and the Third (the most junior of the delegation) would rather not get the incumbent in the Second as  a primary opponent.  and the incumbent in the Second (which reaches to the northeastern corner) would prefer to split West Virginia into an eastern district and a western district which would leave him alone in the eastern district and put the two other representatives into the western district.  All three representatives live on the edge of the state (First in the northwest, Second in the northeast, and Third in the southwest) so it is not that hard to draw the lines in a way that determines which two of the incumbents will have to run against each other.

But at the end of the day, the exact lines will only matter to the people who want to represent West Virginia in Congress.  We are long gone from the days of Robert Byrd when Democrats were a dominant force in West Virginia.  At the present time, there just are not enough Democrats in the state, and they are too scattered around the edges to draw a toss-up district.  Both districts will be around R +20.

When I tried to draw the most favorable map that I could for Democrats in West Virginia, I still ended up with that district being around R+14.  And to get that district that linked all of the Democratic precincts in West Virginia, I basically had to draw a  horseshoe with the Democratic voters packed into the horseshoe and the rest of the state filling in that horseshoe.  In other words, a map that looked awful and still did not give Democrats a competitive district. Continue Reading...

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Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers

On Monday, four days ahead of its latest target date and almost four months behind the statutory date, the Census Bureau released the national and state-level results from the Census including the apportionment numbers that determine how many representatives each get.  As can be expected, there are multiple different tables summarizing the data in different ways for us number geeks.

The bottom line table shows the apportionment population (both those living in the state and those residing overseas — like military personnel — who call that state home), the number of representatives that each state is getting, and the change in representation.   We will get back to the change in a minute, but the big level number is that the apportionment population is slightly over 331 million.  As such, the average size (mean) of each congressional district is just under 761 thousand.  Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer people than the average congressional district.  While the apportionment formula does not work for calculating the population needed for the first representative, even Wyoming has enough population to be entitled to three-quarters of a representative.

If, D.C. and Puerto Rico were states, Puerto Rico would be just ahead of Utah (which has four representatives) and just behind Connecticut (which has five representatives) and D.C. would be between Vermont and Alaska.  Given that Puerto Rico is only slightly larger than Utah (which was not close to getting a fifth representative and far enough behind Connecticut, Puerto Rico would be due for four representatives.  If  both were states, the five states that would lose a representative would have been Oregon, Colorado, and Montana (all of which gained a seat), California (which lost a seat), and Minnesota (which barely avoided losing a seat).  The chart of priority values that allows us to consider the impact of adding Puerto Rico and D.C. also shows that Minnesota barely held onto its last seat and New York barely lost its seat.  Apparently, given the formula, Minnesota would have lost that seat if it had 24 fewer people, and New York would have kept its seat if it had 89 more people.  (The disparity in numbers is caused by the fact that the two states have different number of seats. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part 1 (6 PM to 8 PM EST)

Election Night in the U.S. is always different from how things play out in most other countries.  The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that have more than two time zones.  And, in most of those other countries, all areas within the same time zone close at the same time.  Voting hours in these countries are set by federal law.  In the U.S., however, voting hours are set by state law.   And that creates a weird sequence of poll closing times.

In addition, poll closing times are, in some sense, tentative.  While you need to be in line to vote by the time that polls close, anybody in line to vote gets to vote.  For states that close in the early evening, long lines at closing time are nor unusual as there is not much of a window to vote after getting home from work resulting in many people attempting to vote after work still being in line when the polls cloase.  And there is always the possibility of an emergency order permitting certain precincts to stay open late to compensate for problems earlier in the day.  Even after polls close, many jurisdictions use a centralized counting location.   That means that there is a lag time between the polls closing and the ballots getting to the counting location.  In my county, the closest precincts are still only getting to the county seat about thirty minutes after polls close and the far edges of the county are getting there around an hour after the polls close.  As a result, it typically takes ninety minutes for my small (eighteen precinct) county to report all of the results.  Large urban counties can take three to four hours to report all of their election night results.  This delay in reporting (which is pretty much the same in most states) is one thing that traditionally makes it difficult to project result.  If the three largest counties in a state have only reported 10% of the vote while the rest of the state is 80% in, there is still a large number of votes that can change who wins a close race.

The other issue that will impact this election is the number of mail-in votes.  As we have previously discussed, every state has different rules for counting mail-in votes.  In most states, early in-person votes will be released around the same time (if not before) the election day votes, but mail-in votes will be reportedly differently in different states.  As such, with each state, the big questions will be:  1) is the reported vote just the early vote or also the election day vote; 2) if we have full early vote and partial election day vote, how much does the election day vote differ from the early vote; and 3) how much of the mail-in vote has been counted and how much may remain to be counted or still be “in the mail”?  The early count from a state may appear to be lopsided, but — without knowing the answers to these questions — it will be more difficult to determine if we have enough of the vote counted to know who is going to win.  In states that are used to large mail-in vote totals, it is not unusual to not know the winner of the closest race for a day or two after the election as we finally get enough mail-in votes counted. Continue Reading...

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2018 Midterm Election Preview-Mid-Atlantic

If the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives, the Mid-Atlantic region (especially New Jersey and Pennsylvania) will play a significant role.  Just two years ago, the Republicans had thirteen of the eighteen House seats in Pennsylvania and has six of the twelve House seats in New Jersey.   After picking up one House seat in New Jersey in 2016 and one House seat in Pennsylvania in a special election earlier this year, Democrats are posed for major gains in this year’s election.  The other states are a little less likely to see major changes.

Starting up north in New York, New York has a race for Governor, a race for Senator, and 27 House races.  Democrats should easily win the state-wide races and keep their current seats.  Picking up Republican seats, however, will not be easy.  It looks like the Democrats should gain at least one seats, but there is a real chance at gaining as much as five seats.  The most interesting race will be New York’s Twenty-seventh District where Republican crook Chris Collins is standing for re-election.  Collins is on the ballot mostly because New York law did not allow the Republicans to replace him.  The race may come down to how many Republicans vote for the Reform Party candidate.

New Jersey is where things can flip dramatically.  In barely two years, the Congressional delegation could go from evenly divided to 11 Democrats and 1 Republican.  Senator Menendez is in potential trouble given his recent scandals.  He has an opponent who has just as many issues but also a very big wallet. Continue Reading...

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Primary Season — Late Spring

Because each state gets to set its own primary date, primary season is a gradual thing.  Putting aside a handful of exceptions (and run-offs), most primaries fall into two clusters.  The first cluster occurs in May and June (starting on May 8 and ending on June 26).  The second cluster occurs in August and September (starting on August 2 and ending on September 13).  During both clusters, most primaries occur on Tuesday, and there is at least one state on each Tuesday (other than May 29).

On May 8, there are primaries in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia.  Key primaries are the Republican Senate primary in Indiana and West Virginia.  Both are states won by Trump in which Democratic Senators are running for re-election.  In Indiana, you have three candidates running for the Republican nomination.  It’s not clear that it really matters who wins or that there is much difference between the candidates.  West Virginia is a different matter.  The Republicans are scared to death that Don Blankenship could get the nomination.  Blankenship is the former CEO of one of the state’s larger coal miner and did time in prison related to miners who died due to unsafe mining practices.  The national GOP has (through super-pacs) been running adds against Blankenship.  In Ohio, the key races are for Governor with both parties having primaries in the race to replace term-limited John Kasich and Ohio’s 12th District in which there is both a regular primary and a special election primary (most of the candidates are the same in both, so both parties should have the same winner for both primaries, but there is always the chance in a close race that there could be a split result).

On May 15, there are primaries in Idaho, Nebraska, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.  The big story is likely to be the new congressional districts in Pennsylvania.   Amazingly, there are no incumbent against incumbent primaries although there could be an incumbent against incumbent general election.  Given the newness of the lines, it will be interesting to see how the local interests will influence the candidates chosen. Continue Reading...

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