All of the seats in the General Assembly will be on the ballot this year. But that does not mean a contested election in every district.
One out of four elections this November has no challenger, candidates running unopposed. Most of those are incumbents, but the list of unchallenged elections includes people who aren't even in the General Assembly yet.
Mark Rozell is dean of the Schar School at George Mason University.
"Usually when there is a big race at the top of the ticket, that gets more people running in districts who try to ride on the coattails of their party's statewide campaign," Rozell says. "And so, statistically you even have a higher percentage usually of uncontested races in these off-off year election cycles where there's no gubernatorial election."
Wes Bellamy at Virginia State University says candidates who are unchallenged this year might find themselves in a different position during the next election cycle.
"Just because you’re unopposed in this particular moment in time doesn't mean that just everybody loves you," Bellamy says. "They may be waiting to see what exactly you’re going to do later, and that's when individuals come and start to target you. So, you may be in for a race, a strong race, in two years."
Even in those races that have more than one candidate on the ballot, only a handful of elections are considered toss-up races — four in the House and two in the Senate.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
