West Virginia / coal country

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Unfortunate, but not entirely surprising; plenty of reasons to vote against Obama (of course not all of these are what we might think of as entirely legit, but then electoral analysis should shy away from passing moral judgment), and essentially none to vote for him - other than the 'D' next to his name. And it's clear that that doesn't really matter that much these days, which is quite a remarkable cultural shift and worthy of comment in itself.

Also, when voters think a party or a candidate is hostile to them, they tend to be hostile to said party and/or candidate. I think the intensity of that in this case is quite clear. The question is whether this is just a reaction to Obama's obvious indifference combined with his obvious Otherness (which produces an image of hostility) or whether it's something that will now be held against the entire national Democratic party; Manchin, Tomblin and Rahall were all re-elected, so the state Dem brand has some life in it for now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The lack of correlation between the Obama percentage and those for other dems is fairly strange, does anyone have any ideas why?

Support for the WV Democratic candidates (as opposed to Obama) reflects the traditional pattern of support that was created in the big unionisation drives in the 1930s. The areas where this political tradition was/is strongest happens to be much the same as the places where Obama is most unpopular. It's an impressive piece of partisan dislocation.