Did Southwest Virginia surprise you last night?

[Miles]

All of southwest VA voted like this. I was shocked. 10 years ago, a white conservative Democrat like Northam would have been a perfect fit for this area. One of my least favorite things about election night 2013.

[Miles]

The swing map for the southwest:

[Miles]

I don't think it's a big deal that Deeds performed better than McAuliffe considering Deeds is from that part of the state

Deeds is from the north of the map I made. I was going to include Bath and Allegheny Counties, but those would have had a really severe home-county effect swing.

[Miles]

I don't think it's a big deal that Deeds performed better than McAuliffe considering Deeds is from that part of the state

In most of VA-09, Obama (in 2012) performed better than McAuliffe.  That is a big deal.

Yeah. Cuccinelli won CD9 61-32-7. With just the two-party vote, thats 66-34, compared to Romney's 64-36.

You gotta be wondering what Senator Phil Puckett is thinking. He's the last Democrat from this area. He was mostly unopposed until a 53-47 win in 2011. His district was 67% Romney, 66% Allen; his district voted like that this time, too:

Gov: 64-31 Cooch
LG: 64-36 Jackson
AG: 68-32 Obenshain

[Miles]

Well he is apparently 66, so I would guess he is almost certainly retiring in 2015.  And the seat will be gone for D's.  That would mean D's need a pick up in 2015 to maintain the 20-20 tie.  There are two R-held Obama seats: SD-10 (50.3% Obama 2012) or SD-07 in Virginia Beach (flipped from McCain to Obama, barely).  Did McAuliffe win either of these?

I got T-Mac winning both. He won SD10 46-42 but won SD7 by 7 votes.

[Miles]

I'll have to look at SD13 later because there was some precinct-renaming in those counties.

SD17 looks pretty rough though; Cooch won 50.4- 42.5.

[Miles]

Cooch won SD13 by 3. I'm posting the numbers here because I clicked out of the workbook with the others without saving it

[Miles]

This thread is very confusing to me.

Why?

Its pretty simple; Democrats are likely to lose a Senate seat in this region and we're looking at where they can offset that elsewhere.

[Miles]

One more question for you, Miles: Did Herring or Obenshain win SD-10 (the 46/42 McAuliffe one)?

Herring won it by 3 points.

[Miles]

This is something I put together looking at the counties in southwest VA that actually have coal mines (plus the town of Norton located within Wise County).

I put together the Presidential data of these counties from the last 10 elections. Originally, I was just going to compare them to the state as whole and the country, but Gass and I were looking over it and we thought it would be good to include WV too.

Anywho, this is the Democrats' 2-party share of the vote in the SWVA coal counties compared to their 2-party vote in VA, WV and the rest of the country.



Some of the obvious observations I made; others are welcome:

- Reagan narrowly lost these counties in 1984.
- 2000 was the first year where these counties were more R than the country.
- The SWVA coal counties, up until 2008 were actually more D than WV.

[Miles]

Well, I took a slightly more expansive view of the coal region as I included Bristol, Washington and Smyth.  Mainly because  a major coal mining company is headquartered in Bristol--ANR.  In fact, ANR absorbed Massey (which was HQ in Richmond) after the coal mining accident in 2010 that killed 29 miners.

This is what I was going by.

There aren't any actual mines in the counties you added.

[Miles]

Nothing wrong with how you chose your counties, and I explained why I chose to add Bristol and Washington.  Smyth is a little more of an iffy choice.  I added it because it's voted  more like the coal counties than the counties closer to the Roanoke--Blacksburg region.  The coal counties had low percentages for Sarvis and pretty much straight ticket voting while counties around Roanoke--Blacksburg had higher Sarvis percentages and swung more from race to race.

I would guess if you excluded Bristol, Washington and Smyth, then the coal counties cast about 2% of the VA vote.  I'd guess coal counties in WV cast about 2/3 to 3/4 of the state's votes.

Yeah; I may go back and redo my chart with those too.