District 32 is being contested by a Democratic candidate this cycle. The seat is currently held by Republican Tag Greason. This seat was challenged by a Democrat in the last cycle. In that last cycle Greason won by a relatively narrow 1,138 vote margin out of 18,330 cast.
There are a total of 24 precincts in District 32 all in Loudoun County. There is strong registration in this district, so voter registration drives probably won't feature to high on the priority list (although it is always wise to incorporate it in any campaign). The Democrat last cycle won 7 of the 24 precincts. Let's take a look at some of the precinct level data.
Here is chart showing the Partisan Vote Share by Precinct:
Looking over this chart shows where there is high registration with a lot of Active Voters that did not vote in the last race. As close as this race was last cycle it would be worth targeting Farmwell Station, Weller ad Eagle Ridge, even if Eagle Ridge showed a strong result for the Republican last cycle. (* Active Voters estimated for these precincts, the data sources publicly available do not match for these precincts)
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.
As noted above, the Democrat won 7 precincts as well as the Absentee ballots last cycle. That is respectable, but the real problem is the best margin for the Democrat at 83 votes is bested by the margins in 5 precincts for the Republican, that does not even include the 2 precincts that have roughly the same margin as the best Democratic precinct. This campaign will need a combination of driving up margins in Democratic favoring precincts while also chipping away at margins in those stronger Republican precincts.
The final scatter plot reveals something interesting. There is only 1 Republican vote total that falls between the red and blue trend lines. It is just an oddity that indicates that there is no clear battleground precincts in the traditional sense. It makes some sense with the above observation, but not something you normally see. Fundamentally, 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. Although, chipping away at margins in the Republican precincts would feature prominently in any plan for this district as well.
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 32, 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.