Write-in Candidate Elected to Timberville, Virginia Town Council, Even Though he Didn’t Declare Until Election Day

Posted on by November 16, 2022
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Isaac Kelley was elected to the Timberville, Virginia, town council on November 8, 2022, even though he didn’t decide to run until noon on election day. The town was electing three members to the council. There were only two candidates on the ballot, so it was inevitable that one write-in candidate was going to win. But another individual, who already held local public office, was already running as a write-in.

Kelley received 100 write-ins; his write-in opponent received 82. See this story. Timberville has a population of 2,522 and is in Rockingham County.

Virginia has a declaration of candidacy requirement for write-in presidential candidates, but not for any other office. Therefore all write-ins (for office other than president) are valid. Thanks to Bryan Gilkerson for the link.

Three Statewide Minor Party Candidates Exceeded 30% of the Vote in November 2022

Posted on by November 16, 2022
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At the November 8, 2022 election, three minor party nominees received over 30% of the vote for a statewide office. They are David Zuckerman, Progressive Party, who was elected as Vermont’s Lieutenant Governor with 51.41% of the vote; Travis Steven Sanchez, Libertarian for New Mexico Auditor who got 38.07%; and Larry Bolinger, Legal Marijuana Now Party nominee for Nebraska Attorney General, who got 30.11%.

If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College but Lost the Popular Vote

Posted on by November 15, 2022
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If one calculates the vote for each major party candidate for the office at the top of the ballot in 2022, one finds that Republicans would have got the most popular votes. But applying those same results to the electoral vote for each state, Democrats would have won the electoral vote 280 to 258.

Adding up the vote for the top office in 2022, Republicans got 52,661,573 votes. Democrats got 50,328,897.

But Democrats got the greater popular vote in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, and they have 280 electoral votes. The states with the greater popular vote for Republicans in 2022, for the top-most office, only have 258 electoral votes.

The top-most office in 2022 is deemed to be Governor, for the states that elected a Governor in 2022. For the other states, U.S. Senate is the top-most office in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, and Washington. In Delaware, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Virginia, and West Virginia, there are no statewide races so U.S. House was at the top of the ballot. In the District of Columbia the top office is Delegate to the U.S. House.

Of course, the popular votes in 2022 aren’t all counted yet, but chances are the proportions won’t change. The basic reason that Democrats enjoyed an “electoral college” majority in 2022, with fewer popular votes, is that in so many Republican states the majority over the Democrat was huge; whereas in the Democratic states of 2022, the margins were relatively small, except notably California.

My 2022 national popular votes don’t include votes cast on the Working Families Party for Democratic nominees in Connecticut and New York, nor the Conservative vote for the Republican nominee in New York. But even if those votes were included, it would not have changed this analysis.