District 68 is being contested by 3 Democratic candidates this cycle. The seat is currently held by Republican Manoli Loupassi. This seat was challenged by a Democrat and an Independent in the last cycle. In the last cycle Loupassi won by a daunting 6,298 vote margin out of 25,616 cast.
There is a total of 26 precincts in District 68. There are 10 in Chesterfield County, 3 in Henrico County, and 13 in Richmond City. This district will be tough. While 45% participation seems low, it is remarkable high for off-year elections like these. That vote margin also proves a little daunting as well. All that said, let's look at some data to see where opportunities may lie.
Here is the share of Active Voters by Locality:
Just looking at the pie chart, it is not obvious where you would want to begin, so let's turn our attention to by precinct information.
Here is chart showing the Partisan Vote Share by Precinct. The letter at the beginning of the precinct names represent the locality the precinct is in, Chesterfield County, Henrico County or Richmond City
Carefully looking over this chart reveals particularly strong support in Chesterfield County for the Republican and actually decent support for the Republican even in Richmond City. This will be a tough nut to crack, but this chart tells me the approach may be counter intuitive to some. The largest volume of people who did not vote actually appear in the Chesterfield County precincts, so while some of the Republican top vote totals come from there, the volume of people not voting is higher too, which is where this race will be won, getting people not typically engaged to chose a different direction. Of course a deeper data dive is needed.
The next chart shows the margin of victory in the various precincts. This one definitely gives us some idea of the precincts that make up our battleground areas in this race.
This margin data actually shows there is actually a mix of closely contested precincts across the localities. All 3 precincts from Henrico County fall within the 11 precincts decided by around 200 votes or less. 6 from Richmond City and 3 even from Chesterfield County.
The final scatter plot reveals a very dynamic race. I would target the Republican precincts that fall below the red line and look for support from the precincts where the Democratic vote totals are above the blue line.
This is just a quick snapshot on some of the analysis that can be done simply based on publicly available data. There is a deeper analysis that can be done for sure.
You can request a file from the ELECT office by contacting Vanessa Archie at vanessa.archie@elections.virginia.gov or at (804) 864-8908. Ask what it would take to obtain the Vote History List for District 68, let her know you are a candidate or working on the campaign if you are a member of the campaign committee.
Let's Turn Virginia Blue in 2017.
Note: My name is Donald Braden. This was posted to my blog on my website The Full Slate Project.