I started making formal political endorsements on this website in 2004, just four years after I turned eighteen and gained the right to vote. In the twenty years since, I have evaluated 267 candidates for 113 offices at the federal, state, and local levels (an average of 2.36 candidates-per-office) and 72 state and local ballot issues.
Every once in a while I go back and take a look at my endorsement statistics to see if I can discern any patterns, trends, or other interesting tidbits. I went through this exercise to analyze endorsements from 2004 through 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2021. I’m doing it again today to cover endorsements through 2024. As you can see, I’ve been pretty ‘irregular’ about this. My intention is to start doing this exercise on a four-year schedule (that is, after each presidential election).
If you are not interested in my political views, or pie charts, you should probably just skip this post!
As I have said in previous analyses, and elsewhere on this website, I am an independent. I have never joined a political party, and I probably never will. In the “Miscellany” section of my about page, I currently describe my politics as “Independent ‘conservatarian’ (somewhere between conservative and ‘small-l’ libertarian).” In every race, I try to make a fair, honest, open-minded evaluation of every candidate on the ballot. Party affiliation is a consideration, especially to ‘fill in the gaps’ when a candidate is not sufficiently clear about their views, but it is never the determinant. I do sometimes vote a ‘party line’ ballot, but only after individually evaluating each candidate and each race.
In practice, I usually endorse the Republican in a head-to-head race between a Republican and a Democrat. Other candidates including Libertarians, independents, and other ‘third-parties’ have occasionally earned my endorsement too. I have voted for Democrats from time to time, but this is happening less often (for reasons I’ll get into below).
Candidate Endorsements
The graphic below is a visual breakdown of endorsements in candidate races over the twenty-year period from 2004 to 2024. The large pie chart covers federal, state, and local levels combined. The smaller charts show each level of government individually. At the bottom is a stacked bar chart representing trends over time.
(Note: In Virginia, certain races—including those for local school boards—are legally nonpartisan. Candidates often seek and receive an endorsement from a party, but this is not listed on the ballot. For the purposes of this analysis, a party-endorsed candidate is counted as a member of the party. A candidate with no party endorsement is counted as an independent.)
As you can see, the majority of my endorsements have gone to Republicans (65.49%).
In second place are the non-endorsements (24.78%), mostly at the local level. These include elections for the boards of directors of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, which are political subdivisions of Virginia that have no authority to do anything. It doesn’t matter who runs them. For years I did not make endorsements in school board races because I saw little point of “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” I reversed this policy in 2019, which was prescient given the insane debacles I described in 2023. I also occasionally make no endorsement if I judge that all the available options are unacceptable.
In third place are the Democrats (7.06%), and finally the independent and third-party candidates (5.88%). Many, but not all, of the independents were candidates of the Libertarian Party.
The large number of non-endorsements, most of which fall in the third year of Virginia’s four-year election cycle, causes a recurring dip in the trend lines that may obscure other patterns. They should be counted—they’re part of the data—but I also like to run the numbers with non-endorsements excluded to see how things look that way. The adjusted chart is included below.
By this measure, Republicans still lead (87.06), followed by Democrats (7.06%), then independent and third-party candidates (5.88%).
This visualization makes it clearer that Democrats have done better with me in local races than in state and federal elections. This is because local offices used to have little (if any) power on the key human rights issues, especially the right to life and right to self-defense. I was more willing to overlook a candidate’s views on these issues if they showed good judgment on the local matters that would fall within their purview . . . especially if other candidates had serious negatives.
The trend, however, has moved toward more consistent endorsement of Republicans. Fewer Democrats and fewer independent and third-party candidates are earning my vote. This is emphatically not because the Republicans have gotten better; on the contrary, my analyses now often include biting criticisms of their candidates. There are two main reasons, neither of which has anything to do with the quality of Republican candidates.
First, the Democratic Party has become much more radical and much more politically homogeneous than it used to be. Virginia Democrats used to be more moderate than the national party, but this is no longer the case. New figures are doctrinaire national Democrats, and most of the old moderates have changed. A notable example is Senator Mark Warner (D-VA); he was a pragmatic and reasonable Virginia governor who became a lock-step member of the DNC machine when we sent him to the U.S. Senate. The Democratic Party has effectively drummed-out anybody who was not willing to obey its dictates; free-thinking Democratic politicians—especially those who acknowledge the rights to life and self-defense—have long since retired, gone independent, or became Republicans.
Second, some issues that used to be mostly ‘off limits’ in local government (and, to a lesser extent, at the state level) are now ‘in play.’ States and localities had little-to-no say in abortion policy, but this changed as the U.S. Supreme Court limited federal overreach and finally, in 2022, returned the whole matter to the states. And Virginia localities had little influence on firearms and self-defense policies thanks to state-level “preemption,” but those protections were rolled back in 2020 and many localities have since enacted dangerous (and often idiotic) restrictions. Candidates’ views on these issues are relevant at all levels now; they cannot be put aside.
It is very difficult to justify voting for a candidate who does not consistently acknowledge and defend the three human rights—life, liberty, and property—and the two associated rights—self-defense and self-government. Failure to support the right to life, and to properly prioritize the right to life ahead of liberty and property rights in cases of conflict, is especially egregious. Come on; it’s the first one. If you can’t get that one right it’s hard to trust your judgment on anything else. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has made opposition to the right to life and opposition to self-defense rights centers of their political identity.
This also accounts for my growing reluctance to endorse Libertarian candidates. The Libertarian Party has a pro-life wing, but it is a minority. Most party nominees consider abortion policy a state-level issue, and either support so-called “abortion rights” or take incoherent middle-positions like a “viability standard.” This continues to be a source of frustration for me; Libertarians get a lot of things right, but most of them get the first thing wrong. What’s the point of all these other rights if we don’t have the right to live?
Much to my annoyance, Republicans are often the only option. They are the only ones who at least say they support these fundamental human rights . . . and, sincere or not, generally enact policies that protect them. In cases where the Republican candidate is unacceptable, and where I might have been able to consider a reasonable Democrat or Libertarian in the past, I often can’t anymore. I will not endorse putting somebody who opposes basic rights in a position to undermine them. In those cases, I now make no endorsement.
Referendums
This graphic is a visual breakdown of my endorsements in referendums over the twenty-year period from 2004 to 2024. The large pie chart covers both Virginia constitutional amendments and local bond referendums. The smaller charts show the two types of referendums individually. At the bottom are stacked bar charts representing trends over time.
I’m still pretty close to 50/50 on support for ballot referendums overall, but, as in past analyses, the pattern is very different between the two types.
I have generally supported statewide referendums to amend the Constitution of Virginia (88.89% endorsed, 11.11% opposed). Over the last twenty years, most of the proposed amendments have been good . . . or at least harmless. I am frustrated by the constant stream of one-off property tax exemptions—these should be handled with a one-time amendment to give exemption authority to the legislature—but they’re still fine in most cases.
Local bond referendums are a different matter; I am twice as likely to oppose them as I am to support them (33.33% endorsed, 66.67% opposed). My reasoning is usually very simple: bonds are debt, and you should only use debt to purchase things you can’t afford out-of-pocket. Local governments abuse the privilege, and voters let them get away with it. I also strongly oppose bonds for schools, which appear on almost every ballot these days, because they are extremely well-funded and largely unaccountable. I won’t support giving them even one cent more until they get a top-to-bottom review and re-think.
Voter Agreement
It’s also interesting to look at whether or not the voters agree with me—that is, do my endorsed candidates and referendums end up winning? The following image shows voter agreement for offices (candidate races) and referendums, and trends over time:
I’m near 50/50 here. When it comes to candidates and offices, the voters agreed with me 52.95% of the time (these statistics exclude races where I made no endorsement). For referendums, the voters agreed with me 45.83% of the time.
It happens that Virginia is a ‘swing state,’ and I lived in ‘swing districts’ for much of the 2004-2024 period, so it makes sense that the voters would oscillate between agreeing and disagreeing with my endorsements in candidate races. The trend line also follows a predictable pattern; as Virginia shifted a bit left (and I didn’t), the agreement rates trended downward.
On referendums, the relatively low agreement rate comes almost entirely from the bond referendums. Most voters do not seem to understand that bonds are debt. They see a referendum for schools or parks (or whatever) and assume that voting “yes” is supporting those things. So they almost always pass, usually with 70% or more of the vote, regardless of merit.
Conclusion
I’m still an independent.
Although these graphs make me look like I’ve almost become a Republican, that just reflects the other parties’ refusal to put forth candidates who consistently affirm the human rights to life, liberty, and property. When combined with political changes that make it impossible to put those matters aside in certain state and local races, I often have little choice.
Little has changed since my last analysis of these patterns. In that article, I said: “Give me better alternatives and I’ll vote for them, no matter what party, no matter what background.” I’m still waiting for the Democrats, Libertarians, or anybody else to take up my offer. Until they do, it’ll continue to be Republicans-by-default in most races . . . even when those Republicans are awful.
(Although I do have my limits.)