Reply #23: I get the impression they're purposely vague on the timeframe

[liberalpragmatist]

I've never seen anything suggesting what year it actually is. It's always just somewhere "around" current days, maybe a couple years in the future or a couple years back.

It does sort of seem like the midterm and presidential races are flipped, but then again, they make historical references to other presidential campaigns, so it wouldn't really make sense for the show to have the presidential races suddenly shift at some point in history.

One fan site suggested that in the West Wing world there's a provision in the 25th Amendment for a new election for a four-year term after a vacancy. So for instance, if a President dies in office before the midterms, there's a special election in the next midterm race for a full four-year term (I've seen some legal scholars advocate this in real life). If the President dies within 2 years of the regular election, there's no special election, just the regular one.