I’ve never been much of a predictor of races…  mainly because I usually was in them and didn’t spend the time to figure out who was going to win and who was going to lose.

So, here are some of the easy picks for today’s election…

President - Hillary 63, Obama 37 (didn’t you love the poll that had Obama and McCain in a virtual dead-heat in West Virginia?  What’s shocking about that you might ask since West Virginia has become such a hard fought state?  Well, the poll was conducted with… likely Democrat voters!  Obama 37 McCain 35 - among West Virginia DEMOCRATS only!  That has to make every Republican running for office come away with a smile on their face.)

Governor - Mojo 69   Crazy Ol’ Mel 31 - Mel breaks the magic 30% threshold and shows that Joe’s approval rating has truly plummetted when Crazy Ol’ Mel garners 30%.

Secretary of State - Natalie Tennant 52  Joe Delong 40, Billy Wayne Bailey 8…. sorry Joe can spend all the money he wants about with his mom standing beside him (OK, that may go down as one of the creepiest commercials this election season, I still don’t understand the purpose), AND having the Service Employees Union drop a cool $100,000 in independent expenditure (right, for a Sec State race, can’t imagine why they would do that), but I think he is still going to come up short against Natalie.  And, the 8-10% that Billy Wayne picks up will be exactly the deficit between Natalie and Joe.

Attorney General - I’ll leave this one off since I’m personally vested and don’t want to jinx it, but I find it hard to imagine anyone who actually follows politics and the campaign not voting for Dan Greear.

Supreme Court - this one is obviously the most unpredictable one of the bunch.  Geez, this really could go any way, so I’ll toss a coin and say, Margaret Workman and Spike Maynard by a nose over Menis Ketchum, but boy-o-boy, I think Menis has ran a great race.  I think the reason Spike wins here is because he has the largest core constituency who will go out and singularly vote for Spike.  There is no group out there who will simply vote for Menis.  Margaret will have some Democratic women who vote simply for her. But, you are going to have a huge swath of business conservative Democrats who will ONLY pull Spike’s lever and I think that overcomes Menis in a close race, but I could see any combo of the three.  I guess the only outcome that would shock me is if Bastress won. 

Congress - Shelley Capito.  Oh, wait, I guess there is a primary on the Democratic side.  Well, I guess Ann Barth will win, but she has been a dud so far this election season.  Maybe its all the attention being paid to the Supreme Court race, but come on, their whole campaign is built around AnnCan?  Holy smokes.  That’s the type of slogan people use in lower level races… you know, like Junior High Class President.  Of course, Anne will win, because Richie is getting older and you have Thorton Cooper taking away some of the crazies, but AnnCann is in for a rude awakening come the fall.  I mean, she is even trying to LOOK like Shelley Capito in her ads…  why take a faux-Shelley, or Shelley-Lite when you can have the real thing?  Big Daddy is going to have to bounce Anne on her knee a few more times to get her within 15 of Shelley.

Republican Ag Commish?  I guess I’ll go with Mike Teets over Lawrence Bekerle because Mike is closer to the Eastern Panhandle and has won several elections, but again, who knows on these low turnout races.

Any others?  Oh, the 30th District Democrats?  Again, who knows what the crazies in the 30th district primary will do…  Let’s go with all the incumbants, except Dave Higgins, with goodness forbid, Danny Wells leading the ticket.  That leaves two open slots among about four viable challengers, Mark Hunt, Brenda Harper, Doug Skaff, and Jeff Wood.

Goodness again…  ok, I’ll just say because it’s a pipe dream, that Harper and Skaff will win.  Let’s throw caution to the wind and say Harper, Skaff and Wood all win, along with Higgins.  Yes, we can all dream dreams can’t we?  If that were the case, we might actually have people in the 30th district not named Amores or Palumbo who can string three sentences together and have cognitive thought…  what a shocker!

Either way, the primary election has been fun - and is only a sampling of what’s to come this fall.