Why didn't coal country flip to the GOP much earlier than it did?

[Sumner 1868]

Generational change is a factor.

Everyone who voted for McGovern who was 40 or older, would have remembered the Depression. 55 and over would have for Dukakis.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Not really. If you look at exit polls from 1996 in WV you see age had little role in determining whether they voted for Clinton. More important is there aren't many coal jobs to unionize.

[Sumner 1868]

Al Gore happened.

Right? And? Coal Country voted for him?

The beginning of the shift began because of Mr Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore would have won the presidency had he won West Virginia.

Yes. Appalachia was hardly the only place this happened-in fact 2000 saw several other mining counties (Greenlee AZ, Carbon UT, Ferry/Pend Oreille WA, Sweetwater WY, Mineral MT) vote for Bush and remain Republican afterwards despite decades of Democratic dominance pre-2000.