Audrey Carr is a junior honors student majoring in accounting and information systems. She volunteers with Passionate About Literacy Honors College Ambassadors, while being a member of Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting honors society. She currently works on campus with the athletic department and hopes to pursue an integrated Master of Accounting at the University of Arkansas.
While the race for the West Virginia Senate seat doesn’t look to be close, this election holds a very important weight for the American people. West Virginia, a historically blue state, is likely to flip Republican due to unpopularity of environmental regulations supported by the Democratic Party. Without significant changes in these policies, we could see that West Virginians will continue to vote Republicans into office, and in turn will swing the state from blue to red.
The incumbent, Joe Manchin III, has held the seat since 2010, but is not running for reelection due to the changing political climate in West Virginia. Because he would have been running against a very popular Governor Jim Justice, Manchin decided that instead of risking a loss, he would not run for reelection. Unfortunately, this has led to what looks like a clear-cut victory in West Virginia for Republicans. The candidate running for the Democratic Party is Glenn Elliot and the candidate running from the Republican Party is Governor Jim Justice. Elliot is a 7th generation West Virginian who is presenting himself as a family man that is running on progressive ideals such as ensuring reproductive rights for all women, supporting unions and the middle class, and healthcare for all. On the other hand, Gov. Justice is a farmer who is running on a more traditional platform. Gov. Justice is running on the basis of increasing jobs, decreasing regulations especially in coal mining, and decreasing inflation.
Since the primary elections, this race has had a clear winner in the polls. The last polling update from Research America, which was in August due to the nature of this race, shows Justice with an 34 percentage point advantage, which had grown from a 32 percentage point advantage in the polling in June. After these polling results, pollsters no longer felt a need to use resources for the West Virginia senate race.
Historically, West Virginia has been a blue collar, union worker state that has had a strong democratic lean. According to USA Today, “Just 14 years ago, Democrats held a legislative supermajority. Today, Republicans hold the governor’s seat and a state legislative supermajority.” This same article interviewed West Virginians who stated that they feared inflation will cost jobs, which would further harm West Virginia’s blue-collar workforce. The rich coal mining industry has seen a drastic drop in production in recent decades, and many of the coal miners see this as the Democrats fault due to environmental regulations. Other voters were worried about the “disappearing access to abortion”, but it hasn’t seemed to turn enough West Virginians away from voting Republican in the 2022 midterms and, if predicted correctly, the general elections in November.
Prediction: West Virginians are voting in droves based on the economy and policy issues that affect the deep-rooted industries of their workforce. Based on polling and voter interviews, Democrats will have to win over West Virginians by improving the economy and loosening regulations if they expect to win back this seat. As of right now, Justice is the clear favorite and the very important West Virginia senate seat will likely flip in favor of the Republicans as they attempt to secure a majority.