8 things to know about Roanoke’s too-close-to-call mayor’s race (and council, too)

Roanoke doesn’t have the tightest election in the state. That distinction apparently belongs to the Albemarle County town of Scottsville, where three votes currently separate the two candidates for mayor, pending the resolution of any provisional ballots and late-arriving mail ballots.

Roanoke, though, does have the closest election the Star City has seen in, well, memories (and State Board of Elections records) don’t go back that far. Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Roanoke’s down-to-the-wire mayor’s race as well as the council race.

1. Who’s going to win the Roanoke mayor’s race? 

We don’t know yet. As of Thursday, Republican David Bowers held an 11-vote lead over Democrat Joe Cobb with 1,223 provisional ballots yet to be counted — along with an unknown number of late-arriving mail ballots that can still be received up until noon on Friday. 

For context, there were 1,268 votes cast in the mayor’s race in the Lee-Hi precinct, so this is equivalent to one big precinct still being out. The difference is that with a precinct, we might have some insight into its voting history — is this a Democratic precinct or a Republican one? Here, we don’t.

The totals so far:

2. What do we know about those provisional votes in Roanoke?

Very little other than they exist. We know 811 of the 1,223 are people who registered on Election Day; this was the first presidential election in which Virginia law allowed that. We don’t know which precincts these new voters are from; that would give us some insight into their leanings. We know generally that Democrats emphasized same-day registration more than Republicans; Republicans have never been keen on the whole concept of same-day registration. We also know that Democrats like mail balloting a lot more than Republicans do. All that suggests the uncounted votes will tilt Cobb’s way but we really don’t know until they’re actually counted.

3. When will we know who won?

Electoral board members are supposed to wrap up dealing with provisional ballots by Monday.

4. Could there be a recount?

Absolutely. State law allows for recounts if the margin is 1% or less; the government foots the bill if the margin is 0.5% or less. The margin here is currently 0.03%. Recounts also rarely change many votes. The recount this summer in the 5th Congressional District Republican primary between Rep. Bob Good and challenger John McGuire (who won) changed just eight votes.

5. Why is the mayor’s race so close?

For that and other election questions, math is our friend.

Let’s see how the candidates fared compared to their party’s presidential candidates.

Here’s what I notice: Bowers ran 537 votes behind his party’s presidential nominee while Cobb ran 10,201 votes behind his. That’s almost exactly the number of votes Moon polled. When we look at where Moon’s votes came from, they came primarily from the city’s Black precincts — she won Eureka Park (54.59%), Forest Park (42.65%) and Lincoln Terrace (59.38%). Put plainly, she pulled votes away from Cobb. 

If this had been a two-way race, there’s no reason to think it would have been anything other than a resounding victory for Cobb.

6. When was the last time Roanoke had an election this close?

In the 2016 council races, John Garland took the third and final seat available, finishing 47 votes ahead of Trish White-Boyd. That was when council elections were in May, so the total number of votes was much smaller, which mathematically makes a close election more possible.

7. How was Republican Nick Hagen able to win a council seat when Kamala Harris carried Roanoke?

Roanoke is a Democratic-leaning city and this year was no exception. Kamala Harris took 60.82% of the vote in Roanoke, about what other Democratic presidential candidates have received lately. Democrat Tim Kaine ran even better in his Senate race, taking 63.70% of the vote in the city. Even the Democratic House candidate, Ken Mitchell, won Roanoke, even as he lost the 6th District overall. He took 57.24% of the vote. So how then was Nick Hagen able to become the first Republican elected to city council since 2000?

Let’s do the same math.

The conclusion: Trump voters didn’t have much ballot drop-off between president and council and more of them stuck with Hagen than Garrett. Harris voters, though, split their council votes. Most stayed with McGuire and Nash but after that they went pretty evenly between Powers and Woods. 

Powers had the advantage of being the best-known of the candidates; she’d been elected five times as city treasurer — as a Democrat. Woods had the disadvantage of not being well-known, and also not well-funded, which made it harder to get his name out. There was a split of unknown size among Democrats: Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed Powers over Woods but never said why.

Without that split vote, it seems likely that Woods would have taken the third council slot. 

8. Will provisional ballots make any difference in the council races?

No, not in terms of who won and lost. Even if all 1,223 provisional ballots had votes for Powers and not Hagen, she’d still come in at 14,647 votes. That’s 27 shy of Hagen.

It is possible that provisionals could change the order of finish between McGuire and Nash. That’s significant because the leading vote-getter becomes vice mayor. McGuire is currently 331 votes ahead of Nash. For Nash to finish first, he’d need 332 ballots that marked him and not McGuire. That seems highly unlikely. If more than 41,100 ballots citywide produced only a 331-vote difference, then the final 1,223 (or so) won’t produce a bigger one.

The highs and lows of Election 2024

We have lots of numbers coming out of this week’s election. Among them: Lee County turned in the highest percentage of votes for Donald Trump of any locality in Virginia. That wasn’t always the case. As recently as 1996, Lee was a Democratic county.

In this week’s West of the Capital, I look at some of the numbers this week’s election produced. Among them:

• How much the Democratic vote has shrunk in some parts of the state.
• How Democrat Eugene Vindman won the 7th District.
• How badly the write-in campaign for Rep. Bob Good fizzled.
• How Petersburg’s casino vote was different from the previous ones in Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond.
• Plus, a surprise appearance by pop star Chappell Roan.

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