What rural southern county has the most Democratic WWC?

[Radicalneo]

What rural southern county has the most Democratic WWC?

[SaneDemocrat]

Somewhere in VA?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

[WalterWhite]

Somewhere in Appalachia

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Rowan County, KY?

[Alben Barkley]

Rowan County, KY?

Probably the presence of Morehead State at least in part explains that one, although it's still remarkable Trump never broke 60% there.

[Sol]

Really hard to say without a good source for county level white vote estimates but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was Radford, VA.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wouldn't Asheville be a strong possibility? I know it's pretty educated and a college town, but it has a heavy tourism economy and that often attracts people who are WWC by the non-college educated definition but not in a Trumpy way, service industry workers in general are not especially ones who work as like a bartender at some hipster bar. Also college towns in general often have a bunch of dropouts still hanging around, or people like someone who isn't college educated who married someone who is who then moves there to go to grad school. Granted Asheville isn't rural...but you find people like that in the surrounding areas too, like see the area around Madison, WI.

[Sol]

Wouldn't Asheville be a strong possibility? I know it's pretty educated and a college town, but it has a heavy tourism economy and that often attracts people who are WWC by the non-college educated definition but not in a Trumpy way, service industry workers in general are not especially ones who work as like a bartender at some hipster bar. Also college towns in general often have a bunch of dropouts still hanging around, or people like someone who isn't college educated who married someone who is who then moves there to go to grad school. Granted Asheville isn't rural...but you find people like that in the surrounding areas too, like see the area around Madison, WI.

Yeah Asheville has a decent number and there are some in the surrounding counties, though many have been priced out. The complicated thing here is determining what percentage of Democratic votes are "WWC;" in Asheville and a lot of the surrounding counties it's going be a bigger drop than in other parts of Western NC.

You have a similar issue in Watauga too though the drop off is going to be less steep, nevertheless it's my guess for the answer for NC at least. App State is the kind of place where a lot of the students are poor or lower middle class kids from Western NC -- it's not monied as a state flagship like UNC. You see this reflected in election results, where Watauga was Sanders' best county twice and where some precincts voted over 90% for him against Clinton.

Asheville is only sort of a college town fyi, even though it votes like one. UNC-Asheville is a tiny liberal arts college with a fairly light impact on the city; AVL's leftwing counterculture is more closely related to the area's rich cultural history.

[VPH]

In the Deep South, I would have said Florence/Muscle Shoals, but not sure that's true anymore. The region's TVA and industrial heritage lent itself to Democrats lasting a lot longer there than they did elsewhere in Alabama. Heck, Dems came within 2% of defeating an incumbent Republican Senator up there in 2018.

Expanding the geography a little, I would say Nelson County, Virginia. Slightly lower than US average Bachelor's degree attainment, heavily White, but Democrats are still competitive there.

But it could be something in Western North Carolina too as others have mentioned. Not sure if I would call Buncombe rural, but a few of the working class rurals around there give downballot Democrats decent numbers.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Jim Hogg County, Texas

[Хahar 🤔]

You have a similar issue in Watauga too though the drop off is going to be less steep, nevertheless it's my guess for the answer for NC at least. App State is the kind of place where a lot of the students are poor or lower middle class kids from Western NC -- it's not monied as a state flagship like UNC. You see this reflected in election results, where Watauga was Sanders' best county twice and where some precincts voted over 90% for him against Clinton.

An online acquaintance of mine who works at James Madison, which seems like a similar school, mentioned to me that they stopped giving students Labor Day off there because it was too soon after the start of the school year and a lot of first-generation students would go home for the long weekend and never come back. I feel like that's indicative of the student population we're talking about.

[TML]

Jim Hogg County, Texas

For this county, are you only counting non-Hispanic whites, or are you including Hispanics who consider themselves white instead of people of color?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Jim Hogg County, Texas

For this county, are you only counting non-Hispanic whites, or are you including Hispanics who consider themselves white instead of people of color?

Tejanos are mostly white, yes. Their voting patterns are really less like CA/AZ Hispanics and more like a holdout of Southern Democratic machine politics of the kind that only really died out at a state level in 2010. For a similar demographic group that mostly held the line for Biden in 2020 and can correctly be seen as both Hispanic and "WWC", look to New Mexico's and Colorado's Hispanos.

Excluding them, it's probably North Carolina as earlier stated, both in the western part of the state and to a lesser extent in parts of the Outer Banks. Dare County, where the Wright Brothers first flew, is an interesting case--overwhelmingly white and fairly Republican overall, but was the only county outside the Research Triangle, Mecklenburg, Buncombe, and Watauga to not vote to ban same-sex marriage in 2012; its fickleness probably can be attributed to being entirely reliant on tourism.

[Sol]

Jim Hogg County, Texas

For this county, are you only counting non-Hispanic whites, or are you including Hispanics who consider themselves white instead of people of color?

Tejanos are mostly white, yes. Their voting patterns are really less like CA/AZ Hispanics and more like a holdout of Southern Democratic machine politics of the kind that only really died out at a state level in 2010. For a similar demographic group that mostly held the line for Biden in 2020 and can correctly be seen as both Hispanic and "WWC", look to New Mexico's and Colorado's Hispanos.

Excluding them, it's probably North Carolina as earlier stated, both in the western part of the state and to a lesser extent in parts of the Outer Banks. Dare County, where the Wright Brothers first flew, is an interesting case--overwhelmingly white and fairly Republican overall, but was the only county outside the Research Triangle, Mecklenburg, Buncombe, and Watauga to not vote to ban same-sex marriage in 2012; its fickleness probably can be attributed to being entirely reliant on tourism.

Yeah but not sure if it's fair to characterize the Democratic vote in the Outer Banks as "WWC" though. Dare's the kind of place where the Democratic base is mostly wealthy beachdwellers.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Jim Hogg County, Texas

For this county, are you only counting non-Hispanic whites, or are you including Hispanics who consider themselves white instead of people of color?

The latter.

[JoeyJoeJoe]

If Kentucky is included, then Floyd is a possible answer, as it still elects a Dem to the state House.  I'm not sure about local offices there.

[Roll Roons]

If Kentucky is included, then Floyd is a possible answer, as it still elects a Dem to the state House.  I'm not sure about local offices there.

I think Democrats still do hold the majority of local offices in a lot of those ancestrally Democratic coal-mining counties in KY and WV.

[TML]

If Kentucky is included, then Floyd is a possible answer, as it still elects a Dem to the state House.  I'm not sure about local offices there.

I think Democrats still do hold the majority of local offices in a lot of those ancestrally Democratic coal-mining counties in KY and WV.

Indeed, on Election Day 2020, one particular voter from Elliott County, KY, who was in his early 70s, was interviewed after he cast his vote, where he stated that he was a registered Democrat because of both tradition (since most people in his community have been registered Democrats since the golden age of labor unions) and convenience (since most local officeholders are Democrats, so registering as such allows him to vote in Democratic primaries), but he voted for Trump because he was socially conservative and thus more ideologically aligned with Trump on that front.

[Radicalneo]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Which county?

[Tintrlvr]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Which county?

Perhaps Transylvania County, NC. 87% non-Hispanic white and 41% Biden, not really a college county (unlike neighboring Jackson County) as Brevard College is tiny, and too far from Asheville to be in its halo.

[Sol]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Which county?

Perhaps Transylvania County, NC. 87% non-Hispanic white and 41% Biden, not really a college county (unlike neighboring Jackson County) as Brevard College is tiny, and too far from Asheville to be in its halo.

FWIW Transylvania is also the kind of place which gets a fair amount of outside settlement and investment, even if it isn't perfectly within Asheville's sphere of influence. Democrats here are also probably disproportionately affluenter outside transplants.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Actually yes, it's likely Jackson County.

[Radicalneo]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Actually yes, it's likely Jackson County.

That’s wild

[Skill and Chance]

Probably one of the mountainous areas in NC.

Which county?

Perhaps Transylvania County, NC. 87% non-Hispanic white and 41% Biden, not really a college county (unlike neighboring Jackson County) as Brevard College is tiny, and too far from Asheville to be in its halo.

FWIW Transylvania is also the kind of place which gets a fair amount of outside settlement and investment, even if it isn't perfectly within Asheville's sphere of influence. Democrats here are also probably disproportionately affluenter outside transplants.

Yes, and the same is true with Nelson County, VA and UVA professors who like being in the country.