Best of West Virginia 2026 (newsouthmedia): How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of West Virginia is and who runs it

Best of West Virginia is the statewide readers' choice program of WV Living Magazine. The organizer behind the program is New South Media Inc., headquartered in Morgantown, West Virginia, the publisher of WV Living, Morgantown, Wonderful West Virginia, WV Weddings and Highland Outdoors. The ballot asks readers one plain question, do you love West Virginia, prove it, and then lets them answer by naming their favorite businesses, places and people across the state.

The ballot itself is hosted on Second Street, the platform that carries all of New South Media's interactive promotions. The live 2026 address is newsouthmedia.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-West-Virginia-2026-2. Supporters take part through a public vote that spans the whole state rather than a single city, which is what separates this ballot from the publisher's city-level projects such as the Morgantown photo submissions that also sit on the same host.

For a nominated business, the practical shape of the program is a title that the organizer describes as more than bragging rights, a boost that brings new customers through the door. The facts a supporter or nominee needs first are in the table below.

The dated timeline for Best of West Virginia

The confirmed editions on the Second Street host run in 2020, 2021, 2025 and 2026, each at its own address on the newsouthmedia secondstreetapp.com domain. The program reaches further back than the hosted ballots: a press release dated November 8, 2018 announced that WV Living's 2018 Best of West Virginia list had been released, which puts the program's history at least as far as that year. The 2026 edition carries the run forward, and the next edition would be expected in 2027.

The 2026 cycle runs in two dated phases. Nominations opened July 14 and closed July 28, 2026. Finalist voting opens September 22 and runs through October 13, 2026. Both phases sit on the same Second Street ballot, which the platform types as a nomination and voting ballot rather than a simple vote.

What the organizer has not printed on the ballot page is the eligibility fine print, who may be nominated and who may vote, or any overall ceiling on votes; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The daily rule is published separately on the program's FAQ page, so the gap is narrower than it is for many readers' choice ballots, but a nominee who needs the eligibility wording in writing should read the live form before planning a campaign around it.

How a supporter votes on the 2026 ballot

The mechanic is a two-step public vote on Second Street. In the nomination phase, which ran July 14 to 28, 2026, supporters typed in their favorites across the program's categories. The organizer then published the finalists, and the current phase asks supporters to vote for those finalists between September 22 and October 13, 2026.

The per-supporter rule is stated on the organizer's FAQ page: you can vote once per day per category. That single sentence defines the whole rhythm of a campaign for a finalist. A supporter who votes once contributes one count; a supporter who returns on each day of the window multiplies their contribution by the number of days they come back. Nothing on the published material asks a voter to pay, and taking part is not restricted to subscribers of WV Living Magazine.

In practice a supporter opens the ballot, picks a category, selects a finalist and submits. Where the form prompts for an email address or a quick registration, that step is what lets the daily limit hold across visits. Because the window runs three weeks, the finalists with the strongest day-after-day followings are the ones that finish ahead, which is why the daily return, not any single push, is the behavior that decides this ballot.

How this ballot sits beside its West Virginia neighbours

West Virginia has an unusually crowded readers' choice field, and Best of West Virginia is the statewide entry in it. The other programs on this site for the state answer to different publishers and different geographies. Best in the Tri-State belongs to the Herald-Dispatch and reaches across the state line. The Dominion Post Readers' Choice serves the Morgantown area's daily paper, and Best of Morgantown covers the same city through the magazine of that name.

Further afield, Best in the Valley answers to the Gazette-Mail in the Kanawha Valley, Best of the Ohio Valley serves the northern panhandle through the Intelligencer, and the West Virginia HBA Parade of Homes is a builders' association program rather than a media ballot.

What makes the WV Living ballot different is reach and history. No other program in this group pitches itself to the whole state under a single magazine brand, and its hosted history on Second Street stretches across 2020, 2021, 2025 and 2026. A business nominated in several of these programs should treat each ballot separately, since each publisher sets its own dates, its own categories and its own rules.

Strengthening support for a Best of West Virginia finalist

A finalist in this ballot works with one published rule, one vote per day per category, so the practical goal is repeat visits, not a single announcement. Put the Second Street link in the places customers already look, your website header, your email signature and your social profiles, and tell people the window runs September 22 through October 13 so they know there is time to come back. A reminder partway through the window usually outperforms one launch-day post, because the daily rule rewards the supporter who returns.

The organizer's published material describes a win as a boost that brings new customers through the door, which is why so many nominated businesses campaign openly for votes. What the ballot page does not print is eligibility wording or an overall vote ceiling, so keep support inside the daily rule the FAQ states. The votes guide on this site walks through outreach that fits a daily-limit ballot step by step.