The amount of downballot strength that Democrats retain in WV is pretty remarkable.
It's clear that they want to vote Democrat and feel like they can't because of coal jobs.
I also wonder how much abortion/guns have to do with it.
The Democratic Party has supported abortion rights and increased gun control for decades now. The opposition to coal is more recent. I think it's pretty clear.
There are also going to be big generational components. Imagine you are about 35 in West Virginia right now. Your dad (say, 60) has always voted Democratic, but he's voted Republican at the top of the ballot for years. Your grandpa (say, 85) just voted for Romney as his first Republican ever, but he cannot imagine that anyone would EVER vote Republican for local offices in his good ole West Virginia. HIS dad, somehow still alive at age 110, has never voted and will never vote for a Republican, but all of his friends who feel the same are dead.
The 35-year old no doubt has some nostalgia for the "right kind of Democrat," but it's going to be less than his dad's; I mean, he barely got to vote for Robert Byrd once, right? Both are going to be less than the grandpa, and the great grandpa's attitudes toward the GOP are literally dying every day. There are certainly many Democrats in WV who'd pull the trigger for a pro-coal Democrat still, and I think they'd certainly be able to propel such a figure to victory in the right environment. However, there are fewer of them each year. The 35-year old's kid likely has literally no sentimentality about "local Democrats" at all, to the extent he understands any politics, lol.
