Randolph County Registered Voter Count Sways From Blue To Red

Randolph County has more registered Republican voters than Democrats, at least as of Wednesday. 

It’s been a Democratic stronghold since the Great Depression. But officials at the Randolph County Clerk’s office said the registered voter count on Wednesday was 6,242 Republicans, 6,238 Democrats, a difference of four. On Monday, the count was a difference of seven, again favoring the GOP. 

One clerk’s office employee there said in her 17 years working at the Randolph County Courthouse, she’s never seen more Republicans registered than Democrats. She also said those numbers can fluctuate daily, depending on DMV registrations and other factors. 

A local Inter-Mountain newspaper headline said “Randolph officially now a ‘red county’. In the article, Carolyn Jackson of the Randolph County Republican Executive Committee called this “truly an historic moment. It shows that people are coming around to the Republican way of looking at things.”  

Randolph County Democratic Party Chair Cindy Stemple said the shifting numbers don’t tell who will actually go and vote.

“We aren’t really focused so much on those numbers,” Stemple said. “We’re focused on the good work that we’re doing, with the understanding that those numbers change on a daily basis. We’ve been trying to keep track of the people who vote or who have registered as Independents. I think that we need to factor in that as well.”

Stemple said the Randolph County Democratic Party is working to run a candidate in every race. She said she knows things will not change overnight and Democrats have challenges ahead.

“It’s a challenge to get people to run,” Stemple said. “I’m not minimizing that. But we have to start somewhere. I think things have changed over the past 30 years. We have to adapt to those changes. That doesn’t mean we’re going to change our inclusivity or our policies, but we need to find people who are brave enough to run, and we will give them all the support that we possibly can.”

Stemple says instead of red or blue, maybe Randolph is a “purple” county. 

WVPB reached out to Randolph County Republican Party members for comment. We had not received a response by the time of publication.