District 62 is being contested by 2 Democratic candidates this cycle. The seat is currently held by Republican Riley Ingram. In 2015, this seat was challenged by one of the Democratic candidates also running this year, Sheila Bynum-Coleman. Ingram won this seat by a 2,325 vote margin out of 12,153 votes cast in 2015. There is all kinds of opportunity in this district for sure.
DISTRICT 62 FAST FACTS
There are a total of 21 precincts in District 62. Chesterfield County has the most precincts with 10 while Prince George County has 2, Henrico County 4 and Hopewell City 5. Chesterfield is also the dominate locality in terms of Active Voters as well.
Here is the share of Active Voters by Locality:
Just judging by the pie chart it is clear the focus will be on Chesterfield County. That said, if voter registration can be boosted in some other areas, it is worth working most precincts in the district pretty heavily as well.
Here is chart showing the vote share of active voters by precinct. The initial at the beginning of each precinct name indicates the locality the precinct is in, (C) Chesterfield, (H) Henrico, (HO) Hopewell, (P) Prince George.
Nothing surprising here. Chesterfield County is where most of the opportunity lies, although, as noted above, registration drives in Hopewell City could pay some dividends as well.
This next chart will help identify our battleground precincts. Areas with low margins already make good targets to work early and build momentum. It is not a perfect measure as the volume of people in a precinct may be low, but it is a good leading indicator when developing a plan.
This chart is the Republican margin per precinct:
Looking at those margins, it remains clear that Chesterfield precincts represent the key battlegrounds overall. The Prince George precincts look prime, but honestly there are not enough registered active voters to direct too much focus there. You should never ignore any part of your district, just it would not be a priority area for me to work early.
The final scatter plot shows actual vote totals versus the Active Registered Voter total per precinct. The weakest support for the Republican will be the precincts below the red line, while the strongest areas of support for the Democrat are above the blue line. These precincts would form a good starting point for building support for any Democratic campaign in this district.
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 62, 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.