What happened to West Virginia and Virginia

[RFayette]

Also, areas becoming more educated/cosmopolitan doesn't necessarily mean they will start voting Dem because of partisan realignment.   While the GOP is attracting a lot more downscale voters, Romney is hardly someone who would've scared away the traditional high-class GOP voters.  The underlying trends have more to do with gov't funding and immigration, IMO.  

Most of the trending Dem areas like NoVA are becoming much more diverse, though some whites are jumping to the Democrats as well because of cultural issues.  Of course, there are plenty of well-educated, wealthy born-again Christians, a hyper-GOP demographic, in the South, Interior West, and Midwest (Cincinnati, Houston, Milwaukee, Montgomery, Indianapolis 'burbs are all good examples)  Whether they're cosmopolitan or not is really more of a question of definition more than anything.  I consider them so, but I'm sure others would disagree.       

Some places, like the Research Triangle, trend liberal because government grants are a huge part of scientific research.  As long as the GOP remains more conservative on fiscal issues, non-military public sector employees, whether they be teachers or researchers, will tend to be Democrats (barring social conservatism).  NoVA is also changing because of this.  

[RFayette]

Also, areas becoming more educated/cosmopolitan doesn't necessarily mean they will start voting Dem because of partisan realignment.   While the GOP is attracting a lot more downscale voters, Romney is hardly someone who would've scared away the traditional high-class GOP voters.  The underlying trends have more to do with gov't funding and immigration, IMO.  

Most of the trending Dem areas like NoVA are becoming much more diverse, though some whites are jumping to the Democrats as well because of cultural issues.  Of course, there are plenty of well-educated, wealthy born-again Christians, a hyper-GOP demographic, in the South, Interior West, and Midwest (Cincinnati, Houston, Milwaukee, Montgomery, Indianapolis 'burbs are all good examples)  Whether they're cosmopolitan or not is really more of a question of definition more than anything.  I consider them so, but I'm sure others would disagree.      

Some places, like the Research Triangle, trend liberal because government grants are a huge part of scientific research.  As long as the GOP remains more conservative on fiscal issues, non-military public sector employees, whether they be teachers or researchers, will tend to be Democrats (barring social conservatism).  NoVA is also changing because of this.  

Exactly.  People WAY too often look at trends with the mindset of "Area X voted Republican in 2000.  Area X now votes Democrat. --> The parties changed drastically."  Just as 2015 Arkansas is not the same state that elected Clinton to the governorship and Vermont is not the same state today that voted for Reagan twice, NOVA is not the same place it was even ten years ago.

Ann Coulter had an interesting article on this:
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-12-05.html

I hate citing her, but changing racial composition is a big, big factor, arguably moreso than whatever changes cosmopolitan whites are making in a lot of these places.  The liberal cosmopolitan whites weren't voting for Bush in 2004. 

[RFayette]

The idea that WV went GOP because of social conservatism really should be put to rest.

Poor, racist, socially conservative states such as Mississippi and Arkansas were voting GOP long before WV went that way. Reagan and Bush were strong social conservatives, let us not forget as well. Nixon was, too.

It has everything to do with coal. Democrats did not play nearly as much to environmentalism in the era up until the W Presidency. WV and Kentucky rely heavily on coal jobs, and indeed we've seen them swing much harder toward Republicans than the Deep South, and perhaps much harder than anywhere else in the country.

Um, AR and WV shifted almost at the same time.

Agree with the rest of what you said, as WV is actually not that religious and has relatively few Evangelicals.  Except WVers are very pro-gun, which had a marginal impact in 2000-2008 (coal outweighed all in 2012)