District 64 is being contested by 3 Democratic candidates this cycle. The seat is currently held by Republican Rick Morris. He is not running this cycle even though he ran uncontested last cycle. There are 2 Republicans and 3 Democrats declared for this seat. In 2015 Morris drew 15,208 votes in that uncontested race. This seat is wide open this year. Should be a fun race to follow.
DISTRICT 64 FAST FACTS
This district includes a whole variety of localities. Isle of Wight County has the most precincts with 14 followed in descending order by Prince George County with 9, Surry County with 6, Southampton County with 5, Sussex County with 4 and Franklin and Suffolk Cities each with 3. Voter registration appears to be high, so the distribution of Active Voters across the precincts will be pretty stable.
Here is the share of Active Voters by Locality:
While there are a lot of localities included in this district most of the energy should obviously be spent on Isle of Wight and Prince George Counties. You don't want to ignore the other areas, it is just those two should form your priority as a candidate.
This next chart shows republican vote share compared to those that did not vote by locality.
This chart simply reinforces where most of the opportunity lies, Isle of Wight and Prince George Counties. This does reveal that there is some small gains to be made in Suffolk City as well.
Here is chart showing the vote share of active vote rs by precinct. The initial at the beginning of each precinct name indicates the locality the precinct is in, (I) Isle of Wight, (P) Prince George, (S) Southampton, (SU) Surry, (SX) Sussex, (F) Franklin and (SK) Suffolk.
Breaking it down by precinct is somewhat revealing. Definitely want to spend some time in Holland precinct in Suffolk City as well as Blano and Templeton in Prince George county and most of Isle of Wight. This gives a good basis for targeting by opportunity for sure.
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. 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 64, 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.