I'll guess I'll dare be the one that raises the question: is it possible Appalachia is simply more racist today than it was in the 1980s? Note that the Virginia coal counties voted for Doug Wilder in 1989 then had Republican swings in 2008.
Well, the coal counties in VA have fewer people, fewer coal miners, and more prisons and jail guards than they did in 1989, though it's not a place where different people moved in. They just died off or left. I suppose that the ones that stayed could be more racist hickey than the ones that left.
It is fun to look at a county like McDowell WV which cast like 35,000 votes in the 50s and cast 6,000 in 2016. Or Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise cast a total of 26,000 votes in the 1989 election while Loudoun cast 21,000 and in 2018 those three managed 21,000 while Loudoun cast 168,000.
