A new poll focused on Republican primary races shows Jim Justice with a big lead over Alex Mooney for U.S. Senate, Patrick Morrisey and Moore Capito neck-and-neck at the top of a broad field for governor, and Mike Stuart and Ryan Weld in a close race for Attorney General with a lot of undecided voters.
West Virginia’s next primary election day is still months away, May 14, 2024.
“The polling is a snapshot in time,” said Brian Dayton, vice president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the effort.
The June 16 to 20 poll was conducted by Orion Strategies through an interactive voice response phone survey of registered voting age Republican and independent voters across West Virginia. The poll has a 6% +/- margin of error with a 95 percent confidence rate.
The poll focused on voter preferences in Republican contests because those are the most competitive primary races and because Republicans dominate West Virginia politics right now.
Gov. Jim Justice, who is term-limited in that role and now running for U.S. Senate, has a big lead.
The poll shows Justice favored by 56 percent of those surveyed with his most prominent competitor, Congressman Alex Mooney, at 19 percent. About 16 percent say they’re unsure, and 9 percent say they would favor some other candidate.
That’s in line with other recent polling.
Justice, who was recruited by Senate Republican leadership to run, has made his electability a centerpiece of a campaign that could tilt the narrowly-divided body.
Mooney, who has his own campaign event with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on Friday, has promises of millions of dollars in financial backing from the hard-right Club for Growth.
“The question’s going to be, does Congressman Mooney have the resources himself or the resources from supportive groups to start shifting, pealing some of that support away from Jim Justice,” Dayton said. “That remains to be seen.”
In the race to be West Virginia’s next governor, the incumbent attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, and House Judiciary Chairman Moore Capito, appear just about even.
The poll shows Morrisey at 31 percent and Capito, the son of Senator Shelley Moore Capito, at 30 percent.
Polling of other prominent candidates in the governor’s race shows current Secretary of State Mac Warner at 9 percent, auto dealer Chris Miller at 5 percent and current Auditor J.B. McCuskey at 3 percent.
Seventeen percent of those polled said they aren’t sure what candidate for governor they favor at this point, and 5 percent said they’re backing another candidate not reflected by the poll.
Dayton noted that the primary is still months away, and perceptions could change based on the campaign finance resources that candidates are able to bring to bear.
“There’s a lot of time in this race for things to move,” said Dayton. “Candidates with the resources that they invest, using them correctly, can start to alter the race.”
The race for attorney general, which is the top lawyer representing the state and its agencies, remains unsettled.
Twenty percent of those polled said they favor state Senator Mike Stuart, a former U.S. attorney and former state Republican Party Chairman.
Fourteen percent favor state Senator Ryan Weld, who is the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vice chairman and a former assistant prosecutor in Brooke County.
But most voters, 50 percent, said they aren’t sure yet who they favor in that race. Another 16 percent said they favor some other candidate.
“So this is a race that we’re looking at, saying people are not thinking about at this moment,” Dayton said. “So this is a close race.”
He continued, “When we saw a 20-14 split with a 6 percent margin of error this is a really close race, but it is also wide open. Voters have not made up their minds. This race has a lot of evolving to do. You have two candidates that are going to be working hard, but this race is far from decided and campaigns will matter on this.”
Weld, who is from Brooke County, and Stuart, who is from Kanawha County, each offered public comment on the poll.
Weld said he’s willing to put in the miles to let voters get to know him better.
“This race is exactly what we thought it would be – wide open,” Weld said. “Clearly, this poll shows that the candidate who runs the strongest campaign will win this race. I’m happy to see the race is within the margin of error against someone who has been in politics for at least two decades.”
Stuart said he’s the attorney general candidate to beat.
“I’m just getting started in my campaign and I’m already the clear front runner even in a fake Democrat poll. To be the clear frontrunner, even in a fake liberal RINO poll, is really good news. The only poll I care about is the one of actual voters,” Stuart said.