Who Are The 15-20% of Clinton Supporters in Deep Red Backcountry?

[NOVA Green]

There are plenty of ignore buttons for trolls of all backgrounds and persuasions intent on derailing threads to feed their own enormous egos trying to use huge post counts on individual threads, in order to achieve personal and emotional validation as part of an externalization of their own situations. This phenomenon is heavily identified with certain personality archetypes....

So, once again I must post the classic image that exemplifies the derailment of a thread that has gone so deeply off the tracks....



Back to the topic at hand of the OPs OT....

The original question posed by Bagel23 and a solid FF Blue Dawg Dem is a pretty interesting one, although personally I would have framed the discussion slightly differently.

If we were to look at Appalachia (Or the "Upper South" according to some definitions), we need to move beyond simply looking at and fixating on the Coal Industry in particular.

We need to rewind the clock to go back to the Whig Party, and the split between the Northern and Southern Whigs regarding the issue of Slavery....

Generally the regions that Bagel referenced in his original post, were parts of the Country heavily dominated by Southern Whigs during the Presidential Election of 1860. To put it simply, most of these areas were overwhelmingly historically Republican areas that didn't vote for Lincoln although they were generally opposed to the institution of slavery, as part of some "Middle Ground" to avoid what ended up being a brutal Civil War that caused massive deaths and misery to both North & South,

In general most of these regions tended to remain "rock-ribbed" Republican parts of the Country (Much more so than even NH or VT for example) from the Civil War to the Present Day.

The exception to the norm in most parts of Appalachia proper were Coal Mining counties, where decades of working people's struggles and mass murder at the hands of the bosses, created pockets of overwhelmingly 80-20 Democratic support, while meanwhile one could drive one holler or county over and see an 80-20 Pub County even back during the Great Depression!

It is important to distinguish between these two areas when discussing the topic at hand and the historical political geography of the region.... SE OH and the entire Ohio River Valley really belongs in its own category because of the massive industrialization and unionization of the region during the FDR era.

So, for sake of argument discussion, if we were to ignore the "Ancestral New Deal Democratic" parts of the region in question, who are the 15-20% of the population that has consistently voted Democratic in counties that have consistently overwhelmingly voted Republican for over 150 years!

We aren't talking about your historical "George Wallace" Dems that switched to 'Pubs because the Feds shut the door on White Supremacist Rule in the Deep South....

If I had to throw some random darts at a dartboard, I would venture to guess that these voters have a traditional ancestral Democratic strain going back to the New Deal Era (We are not talking about a region with massive social and demographic changes), many of whom are likely religious minorities within the local culture (Catholics, Liberal Protestants?), as well as some individuals that are employed in State/County/City government positions that tend to vote Democrat, because the Republican Party is the one that is perceived as wanting to slash governmental services, which means a ton of working-class cops, teachers, fire-fighters, and the like will lose their job and these various counties will become places where there is no law enforcement coverage after 5 PM, kids no longer have an easy ability to commute 30 minutes on a School Bus in order to get an education, etc....

Maybe I am totally off base, but although the sons and daughters of Indentured Servitude (Heavily Scots-Irish) that fled the "Mother Country" in exchange for 7 years of service, only to end up with a crappy piece of land in the Mountains impossible for farming, rejected both the plantation owners (English Colonists of aristocratic breeding), as well as not being too cool with Jacksonian Democracy....

So, I strongly suspect that the profile of Democratic voters in historically "Southern Whig" and shortly after Republican Counties came from religious minority populations (Catholic and various Protestant Non Southern Baptist Communities), as well as a mixture of public sector workers in an overwhelmingly Non-Union environment that were both over-educated and under-employed as cops on patrol, nurses, transportation workers, and various other occupational sectors that historically have self-identified with their occupational sector more so than the locality in which they are employed....

Maybe I'm totally off-base here, but unlike all of the trolls and counter-trolls, posting on this thread at least I am attempting to provide a possible answer to the original question posed.

[NOVA Green]

Speaking anecdotally here, but I have met enough of these voters and activists to notice some trends. A lot of the candidates I have met from these places were not vocal in support of Hillary, but they likely voted for her.

One subset seems to be more conservative Democrats who have always considered themselves Democrats. Most of them have some sort of family connection to the New Deal, and lots of them are older. There is a decent amount of them in historically Democratic counties, especially in deeply Catholic areas here. Their influence showed in the Kansas 4th District special election nomination contest, as most of this type of delegate from rural areas picked Dennis McKinney (from Kiowa County-11% Hillary), who was very much one of their own. They tend to be more Democratic on economic issues, emphasizing the importance of government in fostering a fairer, more equitable society. Gubernatorial candidate Josh Svaty (from Ellsworth County-19% Hillary) would be another example of this type, although he is younger and decidedly more progressive on some issues.

Taken to one end, some of these more conservative rural Democrats are very very conservative. I knew one activist and his wife (from Elk County-13% Hillary) who supported Rocky De La Fuente in the 2016 Democratic Primary and some other minor candidate in the 2012 Democratic Primary. Not the most likely to vote for Hillary in the general election, considering he had some choice words for her when we talked. Sadly, this couple passed away before the election but they were always interesting to talk to.

The second subset is mostly female and more concerned with social justice. I know a number of activists who fit into this category. These voters tend to be indistinguishable on most policy issues from a lot of the more urban "indivisible" types. Many backed Bernie Sanders in the primary, because of his progressive stances. My theory is that these voters are more to the left because they're surrounded by conservatives. As an example, an awesome state senate candidate in Eastern Kansas, Mark Pringle, who won his home county (Woodson County-19% Hillary) was deeply progressive on many issues. Some smaller scale family farmers fall into this category. They are also prevalent around small town university campuses, as in Pratt County (20% Clinton).

Yet another subset, which I have not met that many people from, are very poor voters. Many of them depend on forms of government assistance, but my thought it lots of them don't vote. Some certainly factor into the Clinton support in very red areas. Interesting to think whether or not Bernie would have gotten more in this group to vote.

Another group of people who fit this are rural Latinos who can vote. In many Western Kansas counties, there is a high Latino population, but many are ineligible to vote. While the Latino populations here tend to be more conservative than elsewhere, many do support Democrats. I have a hunch that this helps explain some of the swings in rural Western Kansas (even outside of Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal). Stafford County (16% Clinton) has some too.

Then there are small historically Black settlements in very red, White counties. Nicodemus KS (Graham County-15% Clinton) is one example, and so are parts of Coffeyville (Montgomery County-22% Clinton) and I know some exist in Oklahoma.

I skimmed this shortly after you first posted, because of all the Labor Day Weekend stuff going on.

Just went a re-read and cross-posted in the Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High Quality Posts Thread

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=261105.msg6413573#msg6413573