Best of West Virginia: How Voting Works & How to Win

Four editions, one platform, two separate calendar stages

Four confirmed editions is more than most single-city best-of ballots can show. Best of West Virginia has run in 2020, 2021, 2025 and 2026, all on the same Second Street address, all published through WV Living Magazine under New South Media Inc. What sets the 2026 cycle apart from a typical one-stage best-of ballot is its split structure: a nomination window first, then a separate finalist vote, rather than one continuous voting period.

The confirmed 2026 calendar opens nominating July 14 and closes it on the 28th. The finalist vote then runs September 22 through October 13. Both stages live at the same newsouthmedia.secondstreetapp.com address. Beyond that calendar, New South Media hasn't published a settled category list or a per-voter cap, so a business planning around either number is planning around a guess rather than a fact.

Confirm on the live ballot each cycle whether that two-stage shape carries forward past 2026, since a program with a gap between 2021 and 2025 hasn't yet shown a decade of settled year-to-year pattern.

A statewide magazine ballot, not one of West Virginia's city-specific polls

Every other confirmed best-of program in West Virginia answers to a single city or region: a newspaper covering one metro, a magazine covering one downtown. Best of West Virginia is the outlier, run statewide by WV Living Magazine rather than tied to a single masthead's home market.

What the statewide scope changes for a nomination push

A statewide address means a business anywhere in West Virginia can plausibly enter, unlike the six city-anchored ballots in the table above. It also raises the odds that a search for "West Virginia best of voting" lands on the wrong link first, since none of those six programs answers to New South Media, runs on newsouthmedia.secondstreetapp.com, or tallies its results toward Best of West Virginia's own outcome.

Reading four editions honestly: confirmed years, not a guaranteed streak

2020, 2021, 2025, 2026. Written out plainly, that's a program that ran, paused for three years by what's confirmed, then returned. Neither New South Media nor WV Living Magazine has published an explanation for the gap, and none is needed to state the years accurately: four confirmed editions, not five, not a run of six straight years.

That distinction matters for a business deciding how much history to lean on when pitching Best of West Virginia to customers. Calling it a four-time statewide program is accurate. Calling it a program that has run every year since 2020 is not, and the difference is the kind of detail that costs credibility with a skeptical customer who checks it themselves.

Building turnout around two separate deadlines, not one

Best of West Virginia's split structure means a single burst of customer outreach isn't enough. Nominating closes on the 28th; the finalist vote doesn't open until nearly two months later, September 22. A business that only asks once, near the nomination deadline, risks going quiet exactly when the vote that actually decides placement begins.

Real customers, asked again once the finalist window opens, are what moves a ballot like this, on a four-edition program the same as on a brand-new one. Second Street's platform hosts Best of West Virginia alongside contests for other New South Media titles, and a flag on any one of them would put a program with a real four-edition history at risk over a shortcut that wasn't necessary. Is buying votes legal lays out that line before any budget goes toward either stage, and award-vote campaign planning is built around exactly this nominate-then-vote shape. Buying votes online covers what outside help typically looks like once the finalist stage is confirmed live.