District 10 is being contested by a Democratic candidate this cycle. The seat is currently held by Republican Randy Minchew. This seat was challenged by a Democrat in the last cycle. In that last cycle Minchew won by a 4,060 vote margin out of 16,355 cast.
There is a total of 26 precincts in District 10. There are 2 in Clarke County, 4 in Frederick County, and 20 in Loudoun County. This district is a good target. A 31% participation gives plenty of room to grow. While the vote margin is pretty strong given the participation rate, 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 obvious most of the work to be done is in Loudoun County precincts. Let's dive in and take a look at some precinct level data.
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, Clarke County, Frederick County or Loudoun county.
Carefully looking over this chart reveals that the Frederick and Clarke County areas are generally more firmly in the Republican column overall, but that there is opportunity across the board even so. The largest volume of people who did not vote per precinct do actually appear in the Loudoun County precincts, 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.
The 12 precincts with the worst margin for the Republican are all in Louduon County. This will be where most fo the energy of the campaign should be focused. That said, it is worth touching every corner of the district if you can.
The final scatter plot reveals a very dynamic race. The fact that the trend lines for both parties are nearly parellel suggests a strong pattern of support across the board. 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 10, 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.