Yesterday voters in West Virginia chose the Republican and Democratic candidates for the special election to fill the remainder of the Senate term opened up by the death of Robert Byrd.
The results look about as good as the Democrats could have hoped for.
Popular Gov. Joe Manchin won the Democratic nomination Saturday and will face GOP primary winner and wealthy businessman John Raese in the race to fill the Senate seat vacated by the late Robert C. Byrd.
I don't put a whole lot of stock in the predictive value of primary turnout -- I don't have to think back to far to remember primaries where more Democrats than Republicans voted yet the GOP won the general easily (like the 2008 Presidential election in Texas), or races with low Democratic primary turnout where the Democrats eventually won (like the 2006 Virginia Senate race) -- but for what it's worth,
Charlie Mahtesian notes the following:
Unofficial special Senate results from WV SOS: Total Dem vote 89,741 to 52,230 for GOP
As
noted here earlier, all of the polling on the race gives popular Democratic Governor Joe Manchin a sizable lead over Republican John Raese, last seen pulling in
33.7 percent of the vote in the 2006 West Virginia Senate election. So all said, the Democrats are in quite a strong position to hold on to this seat, which didn't necessarily appear to be the case at the time of Byrd's passing.
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