Nominee | Joe Manchin | Patrick Morrisey |
Party | Democratic | Republican |
Popular vote | 290,510 | 271,113 |
Percentage | 49.6% | 46.3% |
November 6, 2018 | |
---|---|
Turnout | 64.85% |
Nominee Kyrsten Sinema Martha McSally Party Democratic Republican Popular vote 1,191,100 1,135,200 Percentage 50.0% 47.6% | |
County results Sinema: 50–60% 60–70% McSally: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% |
West Virginia held elections on November 8, 2016. Elections for the United States House, as well as for several statewide offices including the governorship were held. These elections were held concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other elections nationwide. Primary elections were held on May 10, 2016.
Incumbent Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin was term-limited from running again in 2016. State Senate President Bill Cole ran unopposed in the Republican primary contest, while businessman Jim Justice defeated multiple opponents in the Democratic primary contest. The state's Republican trend, coupled with past scandals surrounding Justice's unpaid taxes and business controversies, made the race extremely competitive. Justice went on to narrowly win the election, capturing 49.1% of the vote. Justice would go on to switch party affiliation just months after being in office, announcing he would become a Republican at an August 4, 2017 rally with President Trump.
18 of the 34 State Senate seats were up for election in 2016, with 3 Democrats and 1 Republican incumbents not running for reelection. Republicans won a net gain of 4 seats, increasing their majority in the state senate from 18 to 22 seats.
West Virginia had 37 delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Of this total, 29 were pledged delegates. National party rules stipulated how Democratic delegates in all states were allocated. Pledged delegates were allocated to a candidate in proportion to the votes he or she received in a state's primary or caucus. A candidate was eligible to receive a share of the state's pledged delegates if he or she won at least 15 percent of the votes cast in the primary or caucus. There were three types of pledged Democratic delegates: congressional district delegates, at-large delegates, and party leaders and elected officials (PLEOs). Congressional district delegates were allocated proportionally based on the primary or caucus results in a given district. At-large and PLEO delegates were allocated proportionally based on statewide primary results.
Democratic and Republican primaries took place in West Virginia on May 10, 2016. Bernie Sanders won the West Virginia Democratic primary 51.4 percent of the vote. Donald Trump won the West Virginia Republican primary with 77.1 percent.
Electors who choose not to vote for the winner of the popular vote or the candidates of the party that nominated them are known as "faithless electors." Faithless electors are rare. Between 1900 and 2012, there were only eight known instances of faithless electors.
Donald Trump won West Virginia in the general election. In 2016, West Virginia had five electoral votes, which was 0.9 percent of the 538 electoral votes up for grabs and 1.8 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the general election.
The president of the United States is not elected by popular vote but rather by electors in the Electoral College. In fact, when Americans vote for president, they are actually voting for a slate of electors selected by members of Democratic and Republican state parties or nominated in some other fashion.
Eight party leaders and elected officials served as unpledged delegates. These delegates were not required to adhere to the results of a state's primary or caucus.
Under this system, which is laid out in Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, each state is allocated one electoral vote for every member of their congressional delegation, meaning one for each member of the U.S. House and one for each of their two Senators .
Though West Virginia's state judicial elections are nonpartisan beginning in 2016, Ballotpedia shows candidates' known affiliations from prior elections or offices held to indicate how the ideological balance of the court could shift as a result of the election.
Attorney Beth Walker defeated incumbent Justice Brent Benjamin and three other candidates.
West Virginia's state supreme court elections were partisan through 2015, when a new law passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature and signed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) made elections of all the state's judges nonpartisan, to occur on the date of the state's primary election for partisan offices.
In 2010, the West Virginia State Legislature created a pilot program to test a public financing option for Supreme Court of Appeals candidates. This program was made permanent in 2013.
Several groups have run ads either for or against Beth Walker or criticizing her opponents.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals is the state's court of last resort, called in many states simply the state's Supreme Court. This means it is the state's highest court, and its rulings are not subject to review by any other court except in cases that fit the proper conditions for review by the United States Supreme Court.
Beginning in 2016, West Virginia's supreme court justices are elected in nonpartisan elections. With partisan elections held through 2014, Democratic justices held a 3-2 majority on the court heading into the 2016 election.
On May 10, 2016, in the presidential primaries, West Virginia voters expressed their preferences for the Democratic, Republican, Green, and Libertarian parties' respective nominees for president. Registered members of each party only voted in their party's primary, while voters who were unaffiliated chose any one primary in which to vote.
e. The 2016 United States presidential election in West Virginia was held on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 General Election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. West Virginia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting the Republican Party 's nominee, ...
Hillary Clinton's performance was the worst by a major party nominee since 1912, when three candidates split the vote and received over 20% of the vote each, and, as of the 2020 election, remains the worst performance ever by a Democrat in West Virginia.
Hillary Clinton received just over a quarter of the vote, with 26.4%. Trump's performance in the state made it his strongest state in the 2016 election by total vote share. West Virginia was also one of two states where Donald Trump won every county, the other being Oklahoma. This was the second consecutive presidential election where every county ...
Barack Obama, for example, failed to win even a single county in 2012. West Virginia is one of the two states where Hillary Clinton did not win any counties, the other being Oklahoma, which last voted for a Democrat in 1964.
As expected, Republican nominee Donald Trump won West Virginia in a 42-point rout (the largest of any presidential candidate in the state's history) over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, thanks to ardent support from coal industry workers in Appalachia. He thus captured all five electoral votes from the Mountain State.
West Virginia was once a solidly Democratic state; it voted Democratic in every election from 1932 to 1996, except for the Republican landslides of 1956, 1972, and 1984. However, in recent years it has drifted to becoming solidly Republican, and has stayed that way since it was won by George W. Bush in 2000.
Republican incumbents in the West Virginia State Senate saw larger margins of victory than Democratic incumbents. Five Republican incumbents won re-election. In the five races where a winning Republican incumbent faced a challenger, the average margin of victory was 15.6 percent. Four Democratic incumbents won re-election. In the four races where a winning Democratic incumbent faced a challenger, the average margin of victory was 12.7 percent.
Ballotpedia identified nine notable West Virginia primary races in 2016, two of which were state Senate races.
Out of the state Senate's 34 seats, Democrats controlled 16 seats and Republicans controlled 18 seats. Democrats needed to win 12 of the 18 seats up for election to flip the chamber, while Republicans only needed to retain eight seats to keep the chamber in Republican control. Five seats were competitive in 2016. Four Senate incumbents—one Republican and three Democrats—did not seek re-election in 2016. Two incumbents, Robert Ashley (R-3) and Art Kirkendoll (D-7), were defeated in the primary election on May 10, 2016.
Democrats held a voter registration advantage over Republicans of 16 percent. As of September 2016, Democrats made up 46 percent of registered voters, and Republicans made up 30 percent. The other 24 percent of registered voters were made up of Mountain Party, Libertarian, no party, and other. Voter turnout was expected to be high in 2016 because of the presidential election. West Virginia Democrats hoped that the lack of Barack Obama on the Democratic ticket would increase Democratic turnout. Democratic state politicians blamed Obama's "non-existent War on Coal" as one of the reasons for the Republican resurgence in the state.
A Ballotpedia analysis identified the West Virginia State Senate as one of 20 battleground chambers in the November 2016 election. These were the chambers where one party might have, realistically, toppled the other party from its position of majority control.
The states that impose term limits on their legislatures typically see a higher percentage of open seats in a given year because a portion of incumbents in each election are forced to leave office. Overall, the number of open seats decreased from 2012 to 2014, dropping from 21.2 percent in 2012 to 17.0 percent in 2014.
In the West Virginia State Senate, there were 16 Democratic incumbents and 18 Republican incumbents. Two incumbents faced primary challengers in the Democratic Party. There were four incumbents facing primary challenges in the Republican primary. In the election for Senate District 3a, two Republican incumbents faced each other in the primary.
The 2016 West Virginia gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2016, to elect the Governor of West Virginia, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. The primaries were held on May 10.
In November 2010, Democratic Governor Joe Manchin resigned after being elected to the U.S. Senate. Earl Ray Tomblin, the President of the West Virginia Senate, became Acting Governor and won a special election held in October 2011. He was re-elected to a full term in the regularly-scheduled 2012 election.
Tomblin was ineligible to run for re-election as the Constitution of West Virginia limits Governors to two consecutive terms, regardless of whether they are full or partial terms. However, Governors are re-eligible after four years out of office.
Results by county. Blue indicates a win by Justice, green a win by Goodwin, and yellow a win by Kessler. Darker shades indicate higher percentages of the vote.