The Death of Democratic West Virginia

I was too doped-up Saturday night to go out, so I got to spend some quality time looking at historical presidential election outcomes, and one really striking trend to emerge is the sharp decline in the Democratic Party Presidential vote in West Virginia. Since the underlying political conditions shift from year to year, this is best seen in terms of the difference in the Democratic vote in West Virginia from the overall level of support for the Democratic candidate.

To wit:

Which is just to say that in the very recent past, West Virginia was a considerably more-Democratic-than-average state. We’re not talking about the distant past or Harry Truman Democrats or whatever. Even post-civil rights, post-Roe, post-Reagan, post-”wedge issues,” post everything Michael Dukakis Democrats were more popular in West Virginia than they were in the country at large. By contrast, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama have all been less popular in WV than they are nationwide. And increasingly so.

And while I’m sure on some level this is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, on another level it’s not. In recent electoral cycles the Republican Party has been willing to pretend that there are no important negative externalities associated with mining and burning coal, whereas on a national level the Democratic Party has been inclined to acknowledge reality. And in West Virginia coal is seen as a key pillar of the economy.

No profound insights there. But I think more attention needs to be paid to this sort of thing. When liberals write about “politically influential mass membership organization[s] dedicated to the economic concerns of the middle class” they mean as opposed to the interests of richer people. But in many cases people middle class people have a sector vs sector view of the economy rather than a class vs class view. And I think that in a mature, prosperous country in which people have advanced specialized skills this is more and more the way people see the world.