Not sure who to support for local offices? These 5 tests may help you decide.

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We’re not just electing a president this fall.

We’re not just electing a U.S. senator and members of the House of Representatives, either.

We’re also electing lots of local officials. Across Southwest and Southside, we have more than 500 candidates, mostly for city councils and town councils, plus the occasional school board and other offices.

We at Cardinal have sent questionnaires to all of them (or tried to; some didn’t have email addresses and didn’t reply to phone calls or text messages) and have posted their answers (or lack thereof) in our Voter Guide. In Lynchburg, Martinsville, Radford, Roanoke and Salem, all the candidates for council (and mayor in Roanoke) have responded. In Bristol, which has a constested school board race, two of the three candidates have. In Danville, five of nine council candidates have but only one of the school board candidates has. In other places, the response rate has been lower, but we still have responses from candidates from Appomattox to Wytheville (alphabetically) or from Crewe to Coeburn and Clinchco (geographically).

For candidates who haven’t responded yet, you still can. Technical questions or need the link resent? Hit us up at elections@cardinalnews.org.

Voters don’t have to rely just on those questions, though. Here are five questions that voters can ask on their own — and find their own answers. All these fit the same spirit as Ronald Reagan’s famous debate question in 1980: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The answer to that helped Reagan and hurt Jimmy Carter; the answers here might vary from place to place. Think of these five questions as a way to do a quick check-up on your community to see how it’s doing; if it’s doing well, maybe the incumbents are doing the right thing, after all. If you’re in the mood for political change, these stats can at least help you understand the situation that a new office-holder will find themselves facing.

1. Is your locality gaining or losing population?

Different localities may be comfortable with different rates of population growth, but I have yet to meet anybody who thinks losing population is a good thing. Too many people bring infrastructure problems and other growth pressures, but fewer people mean fewer customers for local businesses, fewer employees for prospective employers to consider and fewer taxpayers to pay for services that may not be able to be decreased. Example: It costs the same to heat the school no matter whether the classroom is full or nearly empty.

Here’s the latest map that shows which localities have gained or lost population since the 2020 census, and by how much.

However, before you jump to conclusions, let’s consider some other figures.

2. Does your community have more people moving in or moving out?

Population changes only four ways, and they fit into two categories: Deaths vs. births (what demographers call natural increase or decrease) and whether more people are moving out or moving in (net out-migration or net in-migration).

Keep in mind that because of aging populations, and declining birth rates generally, most localities outside the urban crescent are seeing more deaths than births:

The two big exceptions in the western part of the state are Lynchburg and Appomattox County. Since no politician can do anything about people dying, focusing on overall population gains or losses may not be the most useful metric. If a community is gaining population, that undoubtedly means it’s an economic success — people “vote with their feet,” as Reagan liked to say — but we can’t automatically say that a community losing population is a failure. It may simply be old.

That means the better measure might be to look just at migration trends.

You’ll notice here that many localities (especially rural ones) that are losing population are also now seeing net in-migration. More to the point: Hearses going out, moving vans coming in. This dichotomy — a community losing population even as it’s seeing an influx of new residents — can, admittedly, be confusing. At Cardinal’s candidate forum in Martinsville in September, it caused confusion, as candidates pushed back on the suggestion that the city was losing population. It was, they insisted, growing. In fact, both are true: Martinsville is one of those places that’s seeing net in-migration but is losing population overall because it’s an older city and so many people are dying that they outnumber both births and new residents.

If you go just by net migration, Martinsville would, indeed, count as a successful city — if population trends are how we’re measuring success.

Here’s another way to see things: These localities have scored the biggest demographic turnarounds. They’ve gone from losing population to gaining population. It’s not my place to take sides between candidates, but incumbents in all these places can make the case that whatever they’ve been doing is working.

If anyone wants to see the specific numbers for their county or city, you can find them on the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia website. What you want are the “components of change.” Alas, these figures are only available at the city and county level, not the town level.

3. Is your community growing older or younger?

This can be a touchy subject because nobody wants to imply that being old is a bad thing. Our whole society is growing older, partly a function of better health care leading to longer life spans (a good thing), partly a function of declining birth rates that are skewing the population older (a more complicated thing). However, we can probably all agree that a community that’s growing younger is a good thing — that suggests younger adults are moving in, perhaps even having children. That’s good for the economy in many ways — buying a house and raising a family involves a lot of spending.

There are several ways to look at this that voters and candidates alike may want to keep in mind.

First, here’s the median age of every locality in the state.

Now let's take a closer look at that data. Here's the one that surprises me the most — we have some localities where the median age is dropping and a lot of those are in rural areas, which is probably a consequence of a) older people dying off and b) younger people moving in. The state's southern border has long been a problem area economically, but now two cities there — Martinsville in the west and Franklin in the east — have seen their median ages drop faster than any other places in the state:

It's fair to say these trends aren't well understood. This fall, Cardinal has sponsored a series of candidate forums. In one city, a voter went up to an officeholder after the event and berated that council member for the city growing older. Actually, that particular city is growing younger. So are lots of others.

Here's a somewhat different way to look at those figures. This map shows localities where the population of those aged 25 and under has increased:

You'll see those are mostly localities on the eastern side of the state, but there are some fascinating exceptions, both in Southside and in and near the mountains. When we see rural localities where the population under 25 is growing, well, that's remarkable since for so long it hasn't been.

On the other hand, here are localities where the only age cohort that's growing is 65 and older. Again, no offense to those of us with gray hair, but, demographically speaking, this isn't a good thing.

4. Is your local workforce increasing or decreasing?

This can get tricky because the economics of supply and demand are at play here. If you're looking for a job, you might want a small labor pool because it means less competition for a job. Employers, though, want to see a big (and growing labor pool) because that makes it easier to find the best talent — it also means they can be assured of finding workers. One of the things prospective employers look at is whether a community's labor pool is growing (good) or shrinking (bad). That's why, on balance, it's better to have a growing labor pool because a shrinking labor pool might scare off potential employers. One of the many reasons why Hyundai passed over the Southern Virginia Megasite in Pittsylvania for a site in Georgia was that the Georgia site had a bigger labor pool (and a younger one, which assures workers well into the future).

One easy measure of workforce is the size of the population ages 25-45 because those are all working-age adults with a lot of working years ahead of them. This map shows the localities where that population is increasing (and, for those not highlighted, the ones where that population is decreasing).

All these localities can count themselves in the “win” column. I'll be looking more closely at these numbers in some upcoming columns, but, for now, this can serve as a good guide.

5. Is your local workforce growing or shrinking?

The demographic maps above point to some of that, but here's how to find some actual numbers. The Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis produces charts that show the size of the civilian labor force for every county in the country (and in the case of Virginia with our independent cities, every county and city).

Below is the chart you'll find for Buchanan County:

Right away, you'll see a big drop in jobs over time, a result of the contraction of the coal economy. In April 1991, Buchanan County had 12,170 jobs. By September of this year, it had just 6,273.

I show this not to pick on Buchanan County but to drive home to our readers in other parts of the state just how devastating the collapse of the coal economy has been.

Now let's look at Roanoke.

You'll see that the workforce peaked in August 1992 at 51,940 and then declined until December 2004, when the city measured just 44,455 jobs. That covers a period that saw the loss of multiple employers. I tell people that Roanoke in the '90s went through about a decade of angst (which played out in a lot of turnover on council) but since then has figured out what it wants to be (which has resulted in both more job growth and less turnover on council).

No community is immune to the ups and downs of the national (and, now, global) economy, so we have to keep that in mind. Here's the first thing I look for whenever I study these charts: Has a community rebounded from the pandemic? Some have, some haven't.

In Roanoke's case, it had 49,436 jobs in March 2020 when the pandemic hit. By March 2024, it had 51,109 jobs. By September, it had dipped to 50,590; employment stats often show a tip with the end of summer and summer jobs. Either way, yes, Roanoke has more than recovered from the pandemic. In fact, it's almost back to his 1992 high. Voters might want to wonder who or what politics are responsible for that. Some of it's due to the national economy, some of it's due to the state economy, but some is certainly due to local decisions. If I were an incumbent, I'd be pointing to these stats and arguing “stay the course.” If I were a challenger, I'd try to make the case that these numbers ought to be better.

Now let's look at Lynchburg, the second biggest metro in the region.

Here you'll see a very different pattern: Jobs dropped during the 1990s, as the economy changed, but since then the Hill City has seen strong job growth within its city limits.

Jobs in Lynchburg peaked in April 2019 at 36,925 and were falling when the pandemic hit. In March 2020, Lynchburg had 36,095 jobs. By August, it was back up to 36,825 — so only slight growth since the pandemic. By September, it had dipped to 36,153.

Now, I don't mean to complicate things, but economics are complicated. Those are the figures just for the city; I realize that's what city government is focused on, but no city is an island. In Lynchburg's case, it's part of a larger metro area.

If you want to find the figures for your county or city, search for “Fred” and “civilian labor force” and the name of the locality.

These are total job counts; they don't delve into the type of jobs being created or lost. That requires more research and analysis, but if you just want a quick look at your community's economic history over time, that's how to do it.

True, you may have other reasons to vote for or against someone — you just like them, or don't like them, or maybe they're in the “wrong” party. I know someone who once refused to vote for a particular candidate because she’d seen his kids acting up at McDonald’s — and then, to compound that, he left his dirty tray on the table. All those are opinions; these stats here are all facts. Do with them as you see fit.