If Alaska is such a high union state, why isn't it more Democratic?

[retromike22]

Looking at states ranked by union membership, Alaska has the 3rd highest percent of union members.  The top 10:
New York
Hawaii
Alaska
Washington
Michigan
California
New Jersey
Connecticut
Nevada
Illinois

All of these states except for Alaska are Strong/Lean Democratic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_affiliation_by_U.S._state

[Username MechaRFK]

Oil! Oil! Oil!

[phk]

Guess which industry their employed in.

[retromike22]

How does working in the oil industry make a union worker vote Republican?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

"Oil is making us sick" - Harry Reid


Because they think the Democrats want to put them on the unemployment line.

[phk]

Oil/Energy is a GOP industry much like how Law/Entertainment are Dem industries.

[Heimdal]

They know that if the Democrats allies in the environmental movement got their way, they would be out of a job.

[memphis]

As others have pointed out, dirty energy is increasingly GOP. And unlike so many things in politics, it makes a lot of sense. The coal fields of WV, once one of the most Democratic places in nation, are making the switch too. The county where this happenned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain and was the only county in the state to support McGovern voted for McCain by 10%. Getting off dirty energy is worth the costs though. Aside from the obvious pollution that burning coal produces, the common extraction process of mountaintop removal is hugely detrimental to our ecosystem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining And of course, that's really easy to say for a guy who doesn't pay the bills from a dirty energy job.
But the resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline really pisses me off. As much as we also need to grow our clean energy infrastructure, we also need oil right now. I'd much rather it come through a pipeline from Canada than off many tanker ships from Nigeria, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

[Person Man]

Oil! Oil! Oil!

Drill Baby Drill.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

stuff

West Virginia isn't as mindlessly pro-coal as their politicians in both parties are. IIRC, 2/3 oppose mountain-top mining. The recent R trend at a national level has more to do with social issues and the Democrats nominating a black man (and before that, a rich New Englander).

[minionofmidas]

stuff

West Virginia isn't as mindlessly pro-coal as their politicians in both parties are. IIRC, 2/3 oppose mountain-top mining. The recent R trend at a national level has more to do with social issues and the Democrats nominating a black man (and before that, a rich New Englander).

Nyes. Walter Mondale was hardly a traditional blue collar social conservative type candidate.
That union traditions aren't strong enough to keep places like this on board today when they used to as little as eight years ago has a lot to do with Democrats not needing them to win, and more to the point treating them accordingly. I'm sure fears about the future of energy extraction play into it as well.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Walter Mondale didn't win West Virginia. Michael Dukakis's victory was due to WV being in worse economic shape than the rest of the country.

[minionofmidas]

Walter Mondale didn't win West Virginia.

No, but he did pretty well there considering - better than Barack Obama, for one thing. And won Logan County.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Walter Mondale didn't win West Virginia. Michael Dukakis's victory was due to WV being in worse economic shape than the rest of the country.

He won the coal country, as Lewis noted.

On a side note: This is part of the reason I hate the term "Reagan Democrat" so much.

[Linus Van Pelt]

There were definitely Reagan Democrats, but West Virginia's the wrong place to look. At either end of the traditional rust belt, where either iron or coal is mined, Mondale did fine. In between, where the materials get made into automobiles or other widgets - not so much. The Detroit metro was a particular disaster: Macomb went from 55% Humphrey to 33% Mondale while Wayne went from 63% Humphrey to 57% Mondale despite being much more black in 1984.

It has to do with the structure of the economy of the 1980's, which was the last period of sustained low commodity prices. Prices for energy and materials were low, but this allowed American manufacturing (except steel, which is kind of an intermediate stage between the raw materials and the finished product) to do quite well. Thus, if you'll pardon the cliché, it did feel like Morning in America in the Great Lakes outside the black inner cities, even as the coal country was in an economic crisis. Then along came Deng Xiaopeng and P. V. Narashima Rao and now of course both low energy prices and mass American factory employment seem very foreign to us, probably for the long term.

There is also perhaps a correlation with proximity to Black areas and associated crime fears, though this I think more in 1988 than 1984.

Interestingly enough, both the the economics and the racial issues had the contrary effect in 2008: now the auto areas were facing a severe recession which was least pronounced in resource areas, and fear of Barack Hussein Obama was strongest in just those areas where the lack of 1960's riots and disruption had allowed a certain cultural insularity to take hold.

[minionofmidas]

*needs like button for above post*

[Filuwaúrdjan]

*needs like button for above post*

Agreed.