Gaming the States: West Virgnia

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and the predominance of the religious right.

The religious right is not predominant in West Virginia.

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If the Democratic candidate is able to connect, even slightly, will the working class subcultures in the state, then they will win WV pretty easily. This is the big question really.
If not, then it depends on who the candidates are. Romney, for example, would almost certainly get annihilated there. Obama would do worse than Clinton. And so on.

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There are several specific issues involving the mining industry; safety (the most likely to have an electoral effect, btw), the future of the industry, will the federal government ever actually lift a finger to help the thousands who've lost their jobs in the industry over the past quarter of a century and so on and so forth.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

>>>   The religious right is not predominant in West Virginia.  <<<

What's with all that tongues-speaking and snake-handling then? 

Various small churches, often with odd stances on a few things, are quite strong in parts the state, yes. But the political influence, and thus political power, of the Religious Right is tiny in comparision to most states south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Overall church attendence is actually pretty low for the U.S (religious sentiment is probably stronger than religious organisation), the sort of strong (that word is important) link between the strength of certain religious denominations and the strength of the Republican party that is the norm elsewhere doesn't really exist in WV, and the strongest political organisation in the state is the WV Democratic Party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well then it would have to come down to guns, if not God.

I didn't say that there were no religious factors, just that the religious right does not dominate the state.

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Tell me, what exactly have the federal Democrats (the efforts of Byrd et al don't count) done for West Virginia over the past few decades? Is not being as bad as the other lot really a great rallying cry?

Of course this is verging onto the wider issue of poor Democratic showings in traditional working class areas in the past two Presidential elections.

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It was Bubba's sixth best state; he connected with working class subcultures pretty well. Shame about the Presidency o/c.

Btw, Democratic % of vote in the WV's CD's in all Presidential elections since the 4th district was lost. Note the redistricting in 2002 but only a few counties moved.

2004: 1st 41.5%, 2nd 42.4%, 3rd 46%, State 43.2%
2000: 1st 42.8%, 2nd 43.9%, 3rd 50.8%, State 45.6%
1996: 1st 48.7%, 2nd 48.9%, 3rd 57.6%, State 51.5%
1992: 1st 46.2%, 2nd 44.9%, 3rd 55.1%, State 48.4%

Notice anything?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's a real hard one.  If I am coal state voter, I don't want to risk losing my job to an environmental agenda.

If you live in West Virginia and actually have a job (these two things don't go together so well; the employment rate in WV is but a tad over 50%) then it's unlikely that you stand much of a chance of losing your job to an environmental agenda; only about 3% of the workforce are in mining jobs these days and these jobs are heavily concentrated in a couple of areas. Btw, there's not much evidence to back up the assertion that anti-environmentist voting has hurt the Democrats in recent elections. Even Kerry did better in the main coalfield than the rest of the state (the swing against him was very strong in much of the area, but then he did very badly in non-metropolitan industrial areas generally. And inside the area there was no link between mining employment and the swing).

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But to what extent to the federal Democrats stand for such things?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Despite himself Dukakis did pretty well in non-metropolitan industrial areas (economic events over the past decade being an important reason for that). O/c 1988 was also the year in which corrupt Republican Governer Arch Moore was swept out by a landslide and it's possible that Dukakis benefited from that (the swing in WV was the highest in any state east of the Mississippi that wasn't in New England).