When election night came to a close, Republican Chris Obenshain led his House of Delegates race in Montgomery and Roanoke counties by 943 votes over Democrat Lily Franklin — but there were a lot of ballots cast by Virginia Tech students that hadn’t been counted yet.
Any students who registered to vote on Election Day had their ballots counted later as provisional ballots. Once those, and late-arriving mail ballots, were counted, Obenshain’s lead dropped to just 183 votes.
Obenshain was the lucky one. In District E, Montgomery County Supervisor Darrell Shepherd, a Republican, saw his 43-vote election night lead turn into a 31-vote victory for Democratic challenger Anthony Grafsky.
All in all, 2023 wasn’t a particularly good year for conservative voters in Montgomery County. A 4-3 Republican majority on the board of supervisors turned into a 5-2 Democratic majority. Democrats also won the only two contested races for constitutional offices in the county — the clerk’s office and the commissioner of the revenue — that Republicans felt they should have won. As was the case in many localities, some of the hottest races in the county were for school board seats, and conservatives lost those, too.
Now some of them are blaming Virginia Tech students. Lindsay Rich, a losing candidate for school board, posted on Facebook: “I know many are confused when there was so much support but there were a record number of VT students in District E who voted in our local races this year. Sans VT students we actually won this race!”
Is she right? Would Rich have won if Virginia Tech students hadn’t been allowed to vote in this district? This is the kind of question I love because it can be answered with math. Let’s find out!
How’s how Mark Miear lost the District B school board race
The District B school board race in Montgomery County deserves special attention. This is the one where former superintendent Mark Miear, who was fired last year after getting into an argument with a staff member, challenged incumbent Penny Franklin. This was another case of a conservative challenger falling short — Franklin won 2,246 to 2,160, a margin of just 86 votes. Let’s look at how she won — or, perhaps, how Miear lost.
Once again, I’ll compare Miear (who was endorsed by Moms for Liberty and whose name appeared on the county GOP’s website) with other Republican candidates.
In precinct B-1, Republican Senate candidate David Suetterlein polled 238 votes, Republican House candidate Chris Obenshain took 231, while Miear polled 205. Miear won this precinct but you’ll see he ran behind other Republican candidates.
In precinct B-2, Republican House candidate Jason Ballard took 930 votes and Suetterlein took 728, while Miear won 640. As we’ve seen in the main analysis, Ballard ran stronger than other Republican candidates so let’s set his number aside. In this precinct, Miear ran 88 votes behind the party’s Senate candidate. That vote dropoff alone made the difference. But let’s keep going.
In precinct B-3, Ballard took 343 votes, Republican Senate candidate Travis Hackworth took 292, while Miear won 254. This is another precinct where Miear still trailed other Republicans.
In precinct B-4, Ballard took 964 votes, Suetterlein 702 — with Miear further back at 634. That’s a 68-vote dropoff.
In precinct B-5, Ballard took 640 votes, Suetterlein 487, Miear 417 — a dropoff of 70 votes.
Miear consistently ran behind other Republican candidates (even most of the party’s candidates for constitutional offices, whose numbers I’m omitting here for brevity), while Penny Franklin consistently ran ahead of the Democratic candidates. That’s how she won and he lost. Some Republican voters just weren’t that into Miear while Franklin appears to have had a small, but important, amount of crossover appeal.
His best precinct, B-3, also had one of the lowest turnouts in the county outside those student-dominated precincts in Blacksburg. Miear needed existing Republican voters to like him more than they did — and he needed more Republican voters, period. Two years ago, Republicans won the governorship and the House of Delegates because they had a turnout surge that shocked Democrats. This year, too many of those Republican voters stayed home — at least in Montgomery County. Once again, why?
First, the basics: Rich was the Republican-backed candidate; Derek Rountree was backed by the Montgomery County Education Association, making this a classic matchup with one complicating exception. Rich acknowledged that she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but says she did not take part in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol.
In this year’s school board race, Rountree defeated Rich by 1,406 to 1,304 — a margin of 102 votes — in a district in and around Blacksburg. There could be Virginia Tech students anywhere in that district and we don’t have any way to measure that. However, we can look at precinct E-3 on the Tech campus and conclude that almost all of those are Tech students. In that precinct, Rountree won 134 to 75 — a margin of 59 votes.That obviously wasn’t enough to make a difference, but, wait, we’re not done. We still have the matter of those provisional ballots.
The State Board of Elections site doesn’t attribute provisional ballots in the county to specific precincts, and not all provisional ballots come from college students registering on the same day. In my district in Botetourt County, where there’s not a college in sight, there were nine provisional ballots in the board of supervisors race. However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that all the provisionals in District E came from Tech students. Rountree won the provisionals 186 to 106 — a margin of 80. That’s not enough to make the difference but if you add them to Rountree’s margin from precinct E-3 at the Squires Student Center, that’s a margin of 149 votes — so yes, Tech students likely did make the difference in that race. If there were no precinct E-3, or any provisional ballots, then Rich would have won by 1,127 to 1,086 — a margin of 41 votes. For that matter, Shepherd would have been re-elected in his supervisor’s race.
However, that’s essentially complaining about the rules. The rules are the rules and the rules aren’t going to change for at least the next four years, the period of time that Democrats are guaranteed to control at least one chamber of the General Assembly. Was there a way for Rich to have won the election with the current rules in place? Let’s dig deeper.
District E has four precincts. Rountree won three of them. Rich won Precinct E-2, a rural precinct that votes at the Longshop-McCoy Fire Department. In E-2, she won 605-386, an impressive margin. However, when I look at the results in E-2, here’s what I notice: There was a lot of ballot dropoff. Republican Jason Ballard took 724 votes in E-2 in his House of Delegates race, while Rich had 605. That means at least 119 Ballard voters decided not to mark Rich on their ballots. Why not? We have no way of knowing. Ballot dropoff is a common phenomenon — not everybody votes for every office. Still, it seems noteworthy that at least 119 people saw fit to vote for Ballard, who was unopposed, but not Rich, who was in a closely contested race. Had those 119 people voted for Rich, she’d have won — even with Virginia Tech students voting.
We didn’t just see this ballot dropoff in E-2, either. In precinct E-1, which votes at Prices Fork Elementary, Ballard took 600 votes while Rich polled only 447 — a dropoff of another 153 votes. In the two precincts they shared, Rich ran 272 votes behind Ballard, more than enough to make the difference for her. If someone objects to college students being able to vote in the place where they spend most of the year, rather than wherever their hometown is, I understand that, but it’s a philosophical objection. As a practical matter, Rich lost because she wasn’t able to convert enough Ballard voters into voters for her.
There’s yet another way to look at this. Let’s see how Rich — and Ballard — ran in comparison to the Republican state Senate candidate, Travis Hackworth of Tazewell County. While Ballard was unopposed, Hackworth did have an opponent: Democrat Robert Beckman.
In precinct E-1, where Ballard took 600 votes and Rich took 447, Hackworth won 431.
In precinct E-2, where Ballard took 724 votes and Rich took 605, Hackworth won 606.
In precinct E-3, that Tech precinct where Obenshain took 33 votes, Rich took 75 votes, Hackworth took 32 votes.
In precinct E-4, where Obenshain took 70 and Rich took 71, Hackworth won 65.
This comparison tells me several things: Rich actually ran better in the Tech precinct than other Republicans did, doubling their vote totals. Elsewhere, she basically ran even with Hackworth and Obenshain in the precincts they shared. That suggests to me that she polled the standard Republican vote, while Ballard was able to expand his vote beyond that. Viewed that way, maybe it was unrealistic to expect all those Ballard voters to back Rich — in that case, her problem was that the Republican vote wasn’t quite high enough.
I’ll try to spare you more numbers (although I love numbers!), but we see the same thing with Cody Rush, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for clerk of court, and Tara Vance, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for commissioner of the revenue. Both appear to have run generally even with other Republican candidates (except for Ballard, who ran higher). Those Republicans just generally didn’t run strong enough to win.
Could they have? Here’s one way: They could have increased turnout in Republican-voting parts of the county. The precinct in Montgomery County with the highest voter turnout was A-1, which votes at Slussers Chapel Church of God north of Blacksburg. The precinct saw 64% of its voters cast ballots and they voted Democratic overwhelmingly — 60% or more for Democrats. The second highest voter turnout was at precinct A-5, which votes at Gateway Baptist Church, just outside of Blacksburg, where turnout was 57.8%. That’s another strong Democratic precinct, where the Democratic vote share ran about 57%.
The lowest-voting precinct was A-3, also on the Tech campus, where turnout was just 26.5%. Let’s set that aside since that’s also a Democratic precinct. Instead, let’s look at some of the county’s strongest Republican precincts. At B-3, which votes at Belview Elementary in Christiansburg, turnout was 36.1%. At precinct C-1, which votes at Meadowbrook Public Library in Shawsville, turnout was 40.3%. At precinct D-1, which votes at Auburn High School, turnout was 43.4%. These are all precincts where the turnout was below the countywide average of 45%. These are also precincts where the Republican vote share starts at 63% and runs up to 70% or more.
Precinct C-4, which votes at Blue Ridge Church outside Christiansburg, is a closer precinct but one that still went Republican, just by smaller margins (53% in most races). However, turnout there was just 34.0%.
Higher turnout in these precincts wouldn’t have helped Rich — not her district — but would have helped the Republican candidates for clerk and commissioner of the revenue. A higher turnout in C-1 and D-1 would have also helped give Obenshain more cushion against those Democratic votes out of Blacksburg. Republicans in Montgomery County simply underperformed in terms of turnout in some precincts (B-3 and C-4, most notably). In other Republican-voting precincts, the turnout figures were at or above the state average. However, that underperformance in turnout in B-3 and C-4 cost Republicans dearly. Meanwhile, Democrats in A-1 definitely overperformed in terms of turnout. All that helped the Democratic countywide candidates win, and helped Franklin get close.
Rich draws the lesson that she’d have won if the rules hadn’t allowed Virginia Tech students to vote. That’s one lesson. Another is that she and other Republicans would have won if Republicans had voted as enthusiastically as Democrats did. Whose fault is it that they didn’t?