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Here we are barely a week into July, still six months away from the 2024 candidate filing period in January and 11 months away from the May primaries. You honestly shouldn't even care about the 2024 elections this far out, but here we are.
The hottest races in West Virginia - U.S. Senate, governor, and attorney general - all got started too early. Both main Republican candidates for attorney general announced in the last couple of months. U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., announced his Republican campaign for the U.S. Senate the same week he won re-election to Congress last November. Heck, Huntington automotive mogul Chris Miller, the son of Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., announced for governor in December 2021. I broke that story.
The problem with all of these races happening so early is any polling done this far out has to be taken with multiple grains of salt. Most likely voters don't truly get engaged even five months out from a primary or general election, let alone more a year out. No one is paying attention to a candidate's public policy positions, their voting record, or their words. Name I.D. is really the name of the game right now.
For example, the latest poll that came out last week, sponsored by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and conducted by Buckhannon-based Orion Strategies, really has to be looked at through a critical lens. No disrespect to the chamber or Orion, which doesn't have a bad reputation for polling (full disclosure, my wife worked for Orion until last year). But this far out, any poll is going to have some issues.
The Chamber/Orion poll of the U.S. Senate, governor and attorney general races was conducted June 17-20 using an interactive voice response poll of 651 Republican and independent likely voters with a margin of error of 6% and a confidence level of 95%.
You see reporters include this data in stories about polling, but what does any of it mean? There are different types of polls, with landline/cell phone calls from live questioners being some of the best kinds of polls, but also are some of the most expensive.
IVR polls use automated questions which people respond to instead of live callers asking questions. But IVR polls have their own issues. A 2014 Virginia Tech study found IVR polls used during party primaries can show larger support for polarizing candidates and oversamples for more opinionated respondents.
A margin of error means you can add or subtract from any poll number. For example, Gov. Jim Justice had 56% support in the Chamber/Orion poll which had a margin of error of 6%, meaning Justice's support can range between 50% to 62%. For many poll watchers, a 6% margin of error is high. Most prefer to keep the margin of error at 4% or lower.
In a race with a wide distance between the candidates (Mooney had 19%), that 6% margin doesn't mean much. But in a close race such as for governor (Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has 31% and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Moore Capito has 30%), it means a lot. It also means a lot in races with multiple candidates, such as the governor's race.
Of the 651 respondents in the Chamber/Orion poll, 73% were Republican and 27% were independents. According to the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office, Republican voter registration as of June was nearing 40%, while nearly 24% were considered "no party."
In West Virginia, independents can vote in both Republican and Democratic party primaries. But will independent voters in the general election really make up 24% of the vote? In the Republican primary, will 27% of voters be independent voters?
Other things we don't know. We don't know the regions of the state that participated in the poll. Was it a good mix of all regions? Was it mostly population centers? Was it more Charleston, Southern West Virginia, the Northern Panhandle or the Eastern Panhandle? What about the order of questions?
Again, I'm not saying the poll is bad. Any poll is a snapshot in time. A poll is not predictive and today's poll is not indicative of future results. However, the Chamber/Orion poll shows a few interesting things.
First, despite name identification, the race for governor is not a lock for Morrisey, who has been in four statewide elections (re-elected to attorney general three times and losing the 2018 U.S. Senate race). Capito enjoys high name I.D. due to being the son of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. While a capable lawmaker, his reputation is largely only known in Kanawha County. His numbers could come down unless he makes good use of his time campaigning.
The same goes for attorney general, where state Sen. Mike Stuart's lead over Senate Majority Whip Ryan Weld is within the margin of error with a large number of undecided voters. Stuart is a former Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney who used taxpayer dollars to air radio ads for public service announcements a few years ago. For Weld, mostly known within the Northern Panhandle, to already be that close to Stuart could make for a race that will be very close next year.
Second, I predict as we get closer to a primary, the other major Republican candidates in the governor's race (State Auditor J.B. McCuskey, Secretary of State Mac Warner, and Huntington car dealer Chris Miller) will move up as voters get more interested. Both McCuskey and Warner have won two statewide elections each.
In McCuskey's case, I remain skeptical he is only getting 3%. In 2016, McCuskey received more votes than any other candidate for a Board of Public Works seat. There were 659,740 votes cast in the 2016 general election for state auditor, and McCuskey received 385,831 votes. By comparison, there were 694,154 votes cast in the attorney general's race that same year, but Morrisey (on the 2016 ballot for his second term as attorney general) won that race with 358,424 votes.
McCuskey received nearly 8% more votes in his 2016 race than Morrisey did. In 2020, only Gov. Justice had more votes than McCuskey did. In that race, McCuskey received nearly 2% more votes in his re-election than Morrisey did for his third term victory. At the ballot box - the ultimate poll - McCuskey outperformed Morrisey twice.
All polls have their pros and cons and should be looked at skeptically, but they also all have interesting data.
(Adams is the state government reporter for Ogden Newspapers. He can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)