Some final thoughts about the election in West Virginia:
Donald Trump endorsed Jim Justice in the U.S. Senate race in West Virginia and Justice supported Donald Trump. Unofficial results from the 2024 General Election show the two candidates had remarkably similar results in West Virginia.
Statewide, Trump received 70 percent of the vote, while Justice got 69 percent, and a review of the ten most populous counties* shows the support for both candidates by the voters was consistent.
Trump received 378,066 votes in those ten counties while 370,534 voted for Justice. That’s a difference of only 7,532, or about 750 votes more for Trump than Justice in each of those counties.
The percentages each received in those ten counties were almost exact.
For example, Trump and Justice each received 71 percent of the vote in Wood County, 57 percent in Jefferson County and 51 percent in Monongalia County. In the remaining seven, there was only a percent or two difference between the two.
It is evident that most West Virginia voters started at the top of the ticket with a vote for Trump and followed that up with a vote for Justice.
Patrick Morrisey won the Governor’s race easily. He benefited from Trump’s endorsement and by having the former president at the top of the ticket, but Morrisey did not get every Trump voter.
Morrisey ended the night unofficially with 62 percent of the vote, while 38 percent of the voters cast a ballot for one of the other four candidates. In fairness, there were fewer choices in the Senate race with just two other candidates, who got 31 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, the only close statewide election was on Amendment One. The proposal to include language in the state constitution prohibiting physician assisted suicide passed unofficially by about 6,000 votes.
The amendment passed in 41 counties, but it failed in 14. I looked at the counties where it failed and I don’t see any particular pattern, except perhaps that voters in a couple of the more populous counties—Kanawha, Monongalia and Ohio Counties—rejected it. But then again, so did voters in Braxton, Monroe, Randolph, Roane and Tucker.
However, I still contend the amendment was not well understood by many voters. The lack of organized campaigns by those for or against meant voters were largely on their own to try to figure out what it meant.
And finally, you will see the Constitution Party on the West Virginia ballot in at least the next election. That is because Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Marshall Wilson gained access to this year’s ballot by getting the required number of signatures and then he received three percent of the total vote (only one percent was required) to qualify his party for the ballot for the next four years.
*(The ten most populous counties are Berkeley, Cabell, Harrison, Jefferson, Kanawha, Mercer, Monongalia, Putnam, Raleigh and Wood.)