Randy Smith wants Tom Takubo’s head on a pike.
Former West Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo is locked in a heated primary with challenger Chris Pritt, a lawyer and former State Delegate who came up short in the last 2024 Republican primary in SD-17 to then-incumbent State Senator Eric Nelson. Nelson was later appointed as Secretary of Revenue, triggering a parallel special election in the district. The Charleston-area district voted for Nelson in 2024 by almost 30 points and supported Trump over Harris by over 20 points, so the winner of this primary is almost certain to carry the seat in November; the only Republican who won the 17th State Senate District by a single-digit margin in 2024 was Governor Morrissey, who carried the seat by 4 points.
Takubo has been a loud detractor of Senate President Randy Smith, whose political action committee has been running ads against Takubo in the race, mainly focused on his vote against a 2021 bill that bans transgender girls and women from participating in school sports. Takubo, for his part, has recruited and supported challengers to some of the more conservative members of the chamber, including in the two races we have previously surveyed in the state, the 14th District and the 1st District. In all of these polls, we’ve seen a fairly close race, with Takubo’s challengers holding their own, but many undecided voters muddying the picture of who might win in May.
In the special election to replace Nelson, attorney and former judge Anne Charnock, who was appointed to the seat in February, is facing a challenge from local restaurateur and businessman Michael Jarrouj. Charnock hasn’t been explicitly endorsed by Morrisey, but he has posted her campaign ads on social media.
From April 10th through April 12th, State Navigate surveyed 324 likely voters in the upcoming Republican primary, which will ultimately decide who will represent this reliably Republican district. While Charnock has a lead in the special, there’s no clear frontrunner here in the general election.
About State Navigate & Our Polling Team
State Navigate is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to becoming a compass for state legislatures everywhere. Our bipartisan polling team consists of alumni of FiveThirtyEight, political scientists, and polling experts. Last year, State Navigate was the most accurate pollster in the country for the 2025 election cycle. To learn more about our poll sponsorship opportunities, click here! Public polling on state governance, especially state legislatures, is rare, so we try to make our polling as affordable as possible for sponsors to help fill this gap.
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Topline Results
Our poll shows a neck-and-neck race between Takubo and Pritt. 40% of likely primary voters say they plan to support Takubo, while 39% say they plan to support Pritt. The remaining 21% are undecided. Given that Takubo has served in the State Senate for 12 years and only enjoys support from 40% of likely primary voters, with the election just weeks ago, this is a major warning sign for him.
The special election, on the other hand, shows Charnock with a 16-point lead, 42% to 26%, over Jarrouj. However, more voters are undecided in this race, so that lead could change as time goes on. For a recently-appointed incumbent, though, this should serve as an encouraging start for Charnock.
Transgender Issues: One of the main issues Pritt supporters have been attacking Takubo on was his 2021 vote against a bill that bans transgender girls’ participation in school sports in the state. Takubo has defended his vote by saying that the bill went too far, regulating college athletes as well as high school students, a role he says should be played by the NCAA and not the state government. (The legislation is currently tied up in the courts).
We asked respondents how important transgender sports issues were to them, and as expected, among a Republican primary electorate, 78% said the issue was either the most important or very important. But a closer look shows that this really does divide the electorate: among the 22% of respondents who said transgender women and girls competing in women’s sports were the most important issue, Pritt is dominating with a 37-point lead. Among the 56% who said it was a “very important” issue, but not the most important, the two candidates are tied with 38% each. Among the remaining 22% of respondents, Takubo has a 44-point lead.
Morrisey Endorsement: Morrisey is far less impactful in this district than in our earlier polls in the Northern & Eastern parts of the state. In our poll of the 1st District, 33% of voters said a Morrisey endorsement would make them more likely to support a candidate, and in the 14th, 36% said so. In both those districts, just 10% said that Morrisey’s support would make them less likely to support a candidate. In the 17th, however, just 28% said Morrisey’s support would make them more likely to support a candidate, and 20% said it would make them less likely to support that candidate. This is perhaps unsurprising since Governor Morrissey placed third in the 2024 Republican primary here, and in the other two seats, he placed first.
Key Findings
Demographics: As we see throughout West Virginia, a slight majority of Republican primary voters in the 17th District are 65-years-old or older, and nearly all are white. In 2024, approximately 49% of Republican primary voters were seniors, and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 94% of overall district residents are white. Over ⅔ of district residents don’t have a four-year college degree. This is comparable to both WV-SD-1 and WV-SD-14.
Ideology: As is generally expected with a GOP primary electorate, almost all the voters in our survey (82%) identify as conservative. This is somewhat more than in the 14th District and 1st District, where conservatives accounted for 73% and 72% of the primary electorate, respectively.
As expected, vote choice in the primary aligns with how conservative respondents are. Among those who identify as “very conservative,” Pritt leads by 28 points, and Charnock leads by 30. Among all other voters, Takubo leads by 15, and Charnock leads by 11.
Undecideds: Undecided voters in the marquee contest between Takubo and Pritt are more likely to align themselves with Trump than with the Republican Party. 52% of undecided voters say they consider themselves to be more supportive of Trump than the Republican Party, while 19% say they support the party more than the president. This could spell trouble for Takubo: among those who say they support the president more than the party, he trails Pritt by 15 points.
On the other hand, undecided voters are also less regular voters. Among voters who have participated in the last 4 elections, just 16% are undecided, and among those who have participated in 3 of the last 4 elections, 7% are. Among all other voters, the number of undecideds jumps significantly to 30%. And among the most regular voters, those who have participated in all 4 of the last 4 elections, Takubo leads by 4 points. Pritt’s path to victory may require mobilizing more Trumpy, less politically involved voters to the polls in May.
Maps of Respondents
Similar to our last poll, we’ve created a map of raw responses in the district. Note that the dots are randomly located within a respondent’s precinct and do not reflect actual respondent locations therein. Click on the map to isolate response types!
Team Notes & Analysis
Trump supporters: District 17 primary voters are less “Trumpy” than those in District 14, though a majority still consider themselves more supporters of the president than the Republican Party. 56% of poll respondents said they were more supportive of Trump than the party, and 31% said they were more supportive of the party than the president. In the 14th district, we found 61% more supportive of the president and 26% more supportive of the party.
And unlike in the 14th, where we saw almost no difference between Harman and Manypenny based on Trump support, it does appear to be a dividing line in the 17th. Among those who consider themselves more supportive of the president, Pritt and Charnock are doing significantly better than they are among those who consider themselves more supportive of the party. This is especially true in the Takubo-Pritt race, where there’s a 40-point difference in the margin between the two groups.
These two races aren’t quite in alignment: Perhaps surprisingly, given the contours of the two races, voters don’t seem to be neatly aligning with the pairs of candidates. For example, 21% of the respondents in our sample said they would vote for both Charnock and Pritt, while 17% said they would vote for both Charnock and Takubo. Another 14% said they would vote for both Jarrouj and Takubo, and 8% said they would vote for Jarrouj and Pritt. (The remaining 40% were undecided on at least one race.)
Pritt’s lead among “very conservative” voters: As mentioned above, Pritt leads by 28 points among “very conservative” voters, while Takubo leads by 15 points among all other voters. In the largest ideological bloc, those that identify as “conservative” but not “very conservative” or “slightly conservative,” Takubo leads by 10.
This is potentially a good situation for Takubo. “Very conservative” voters are the most likely to have made their decision in the race, with just 15% undecided, while the 23% of not very conservative voters remain undecided, including 21% of those who identify as just “conservative” without any adjective. If those undecided voters follow the same general pattern as decided voters, Takubo stands to gain more than Pritt.
Could a Morrisey endorsement make a difference?: While voters in the 17th appear to be less likely to move based on a Morrisey endorsement than those in the other districts we’ve polled, it does appear that voters are clearly divided in how they think about the governor. Among those who said a Morrisey endorsement would make them more likely to support a candidate, Pritt leads by 32, and Charnock leads by 28. Among those who said a Morrisey endorsement would make them less likely to support a candidate, Takubo leads by 40, and Charnock leads by 5. The governor hasn’t explicitly endorsed in either of these races, though he has in some other contentious legislative primaries, even though he has given some implicit support to Charnock.
Methodology & Toplines
This survey was fielded from April 10-12, 2026, among 324 registered likely Republican primary voters in West Virginia’s 17th State Senate District. Respondents were chosen from a voter file provided by i360. Text messages containing a link to an online survey designed by the State Navigate Polling Team and hosted on the SurveyMonkey platform were sent to respondents by AllianceForge. The survey was weighted by age, race, gender, and education, with benchmarks derived from the voter file. The margin of error is 5.4% for a 95% confidence interval. The survey was designed and conducted by State Navigate. This survey was not sponsored by any party, candidate, or candidate’s committee.
