District 26 is being contested by 2 Democratic candidates that announced yesterday March 15. The seat is currently held by Republican Tony Wilt. he ran uncontested last cycle. In 2015 Wilt drew 6,561 votes in that uncontested race. The registration numbers in this district are also pretty low. It is great to see two Democrats run in this district. It is ripe for the picking.
DISTRICT 26 FAST FACTS
District 26 is comprised of 2 localities, Rockingham County and Harrisonburg City. There are 21 precincts in all with 14 in Rockingham County and 7 in Harrisonburg City. While that seems like that means Rockingham will draw focus, when you look at the current levels of Active Voters, there appears to be opportunity across the board.
Here is the share of Active Voters by Locality:
As noted above, this District is pretty evenly split amongst the localities. That said, with such a low number of people even registered in this district registration drives should probably feature heavily in any campaign plan for this district. I normally don't pitch that tactic as a priority (although it is always important) because the number one indicator of whether someone will vote or not is if they have voted before.
This next chart shows republican vote share compared to those that did not vote by precinct.
The Harrisonburg City precincts are clearly where the opporunity lies in this district. Every precinct in Harrisonburg City had more people that did not vote than ANY precinct in Rockingham County. That is a clear indication of weak support for the Republican and weak support for them means opportunity for us. That and you need to go where the people are. Of course, you don't want to ignore Rockingham County, this district is wide open really.
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. The two precincts furthest from the red line represent real weak support for the Republican. 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 26, 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.