WV - Strategies Unlimited/WV First (D-ish): Justice +6%

[DINGO Joe]

The amount of downballot strength that Democrats retain in WV is pretty remarkable.

It's clear that they want to vote Democrat and feel like they can't because of coal jobs.

I also wonder how much abortion/guns have to do with it.

The Democratic Party has supported abortion rights and increased gun control for decades now. The opposition to coal is more recent. I think it's pretty clear.

There are also going to be big generational components.  Imagine you are about 35 in West Virginia right now.  Your dad (say, 60) has always voted Democratic, but he's voted Republican at the top of the ballot for years.  Your grandpa (say, 85) just voted for Romney as his first Republican ever, but he cannot imagine that anyone would EVER vote Republican for local offices in his good ole West Virginia.  HIS dad, somehow still alive at age 110, has never voted and will never vote for a Republican, but all of his friends who feel the same are dead.

The 35-year old no doubt has some nostalgia for the "right kind of Democrat," but it's going to be less than his dad's; I mean, he barely got to vote for Robert Byrd once, right?  Both are going to be less than the grandpa, and the great grandpa's attitudes toward the GOP are literally dying every day.  There are certainly many Democrats in WV who'd pull the trigger for a pro-coal Democrat still, and I think they'd certainly be able to propel such a figure to victory in the right environment.  However, there are fewer of them each year.  The 35-year old's kid likely has literally no sentimentality about "local Democrats" at all, to the extent he understands any politics, lol.

The 35 yr olds that you speak of have left WV.  I mean McDowell cast 34,000 votes in 1952 and like 6,000 in 2016.  And aside from Morgantown and the Eastern Panhandle, the population pyramids are way out of whack, everybody over 50.  It's just an extreme situation.

[DINGO Joe]

^ Okay, well I think you probably could have hypothesized a small number of 35-year olds who have remained in West Virginia for the sake of what we were talking about, rather than yet again practically take pleasure in pointing out the state's decline.

Fine, the 35 yr olds left think like you say and then gets on his ATV, has a beer and a little meth and drives around shooting his gun in the air til he drives off a cliff.  Better?

[DINGO Joe]

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2020/10/08/hyperloop-West-Virginia-Virgin-Hyperloop-One-certificiation-facility-WVU/stories/202010080163

Richard Branson is building a hyperloop testing facility in West Virginia, which is likely to create thousands of new jobs. I wonder if this could be the start of a new trend, where tech companies start building facilities in places like West Virginia.

It's supposed to create 1000 construction jobs and about 100 permanent jobs (mostly connected with WVU presumably).  WV already has a surprising number of these things thanks to their emptiness and previous Senator.  Still, it's a nice thing to have.   Obviously, the Morgantown area and Eastern Panhandle have the kind of things necessary to attract something like this.  It's a much heavier lift to get any type of project off the ground in the rest of the state.