As Election Day approaches, the emphasis, naturally, is on the races most important to West Virginians. However, a closer look at the ballot shows that in the majority of federal and state races, voters have little or no choice for their party’s nominees.
On the federal level (President, U.S. Senate and U.S. House) there are ten nominations available on the Republican and Democratic tickets, but in four of the races, the candidate has no opponent and another four are not competitive.
In the statewide races for Governor, state Supreme Court and Board of Public Works, there are 14 nominations on the line for the two parties, but nine of the races are uncontested and three are not competitive.
The only statewide primary races that are competitive are for the Democratic nominations for state Supreme Court and Agriculture Commissioner.
The state Senate ballots are nearly void of contests in this year’s primary. Of 34 possible Republican and Democratic races, 19 are uncontested and another nine have no candidate at all.
The House of Delegates races are a little more competitive, but not by much.
On the Republican side, 42 of the 67 delegate races have uncontested candidates. Another eight delegate districts have no GOP candidates at all. On the Democratic ballots, 28 of the 67 delegate districts have unopposed candidates, while 10 districts have no Democrats.
The Mountain Party candidates in three delegate districts are unopposed.
That means fully two-thirds of the statehouse races (Senate and House of Delegates) are uncontested or have no candidate.
When you add in the federal and statewide races, 139 of the 195 possible races are uncontested, have no candidate or are uncompetitive. That’s a whopping 71 percent. Even if you take out the races that I rate as uncompetitive, that still leaves 67 percent of the races uncontested.
Granted, I have not taken into account local races for offices such as sheriff, county commission, prosecutor and the nonpartisan school board election. They are often hotter than national or state races and can draw out voters. But on the state and federal level, the pickings are slim.
A few other election notes:
Early voting numbers appear to show more interest so far by Democratic voters than Republican.
As of the end of the day Wednesday, 61 percent of the early voters were Democrats, even though Democrats make up only 52 percent of registered voters. Thirty percent of the early voters so far were Republican, which is roughly equal to GOP registration (29 percent).
It’s unclear exactly why Democrats are turning out in greater percentages than Republicans during early voting, but it may be because there are more contested races on the Democratic ballot.
Just nine percent of the early voters so far belong to neither of the registered parties, even though independents make up about 19 percent of registration.
Also, early voting continues to gain in popularity. In the 2002 primary, the first year for early voting in West Virginia, just four percent went to the polls before Election Day. By the 2011 Special Primary, that had risen to over 22 percent.