Virginia’s recent election that determined which party controlled the General Assembly was extraordinarily close and difficult to predict, but one student who specializes in state legislative elections was able to predict the results with 100% accuracy.
“I’ve been working at this for six years,” explained Chaz Nuttycombe, a 24-year-old Virginia Tech senior. “For the first three, it started out as a hobby. And for the last three years, I’ve seen it as a potential career.”
Nuttycombe, through his website CNalysis, analyzes and predicts elections that occur within state legislatures around the country.
The Virginia election on Nov. 7 was his most successful round of predictions yet, as he correctly called each of the 140 Senate and House of Delegates seats that were on the ballot.
“We look at the individual strength of the campaigns and then also the quality and strength of the candidates themselves,” Nuttycombe said.
Nuttycombe and his team analyzed past voting trends in every district.
“We have the data going all the way back to 2019, figuring out how all these districts voted,” Nuttycombe said.
Democrats ultimately came out ahead in the election, but they did so by the slimmest of margins and now hold just a one-seat majority in both the state Senate and the House.
In one particularly close election, Nuttycombe said he was having doubts on election night in House District 41 in Roanoke County, which happens to be the district where Nuttycombe lives.
The Republican candidate, Chris Obenshain, defeated Democrat Lily Franklin by only about 180 votes.
Nuttycombe predicted that Obenshain was going to win, but turnout during Election Day seemed to be favoring Franklin.
“I remember thinking, ‘Crap, I might get every single district right except my own, which would be really frustrating and really embarrassing,'” Nuttycombe said. “It was quite close.”
Nuttycombe is set to graduate soon from Virginia Tech.
When he does, he plans to continue on as a state politics expert full-time, expanding his current operation and turning it into a career.
“This is going to be a big thing that I’m going to be working on for the next year,” Nuttycombe said. “I’m really excited, and I’m looking forward to people coming along on the journey for that.”
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- Virginia local general election results
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