This is a diary that seeks to explore the mystery of why the democratic primary electorate in the Appalachian region votes so differently than the rest of the country.
It seems that some people want to give West Virginia an outsized influence in the debate over whether or not Barack Obama has a problem securing the vote of blue collar white voters. I do not pretend to be able to dissect the psychology of these voters, and certainly do not ascribe to them any nefarious motivations such as fear of an African American candidate. But for whatever reason WVa's white voters turned out for Clinton in numbers that are different from white voters in most other parts of the country.
Yesterday, another poster had a chart up that showed the counties nationwide in which Hillary Clinton had won by margins larger than 65-35. Almost all of these counties came in Appalachia, and the only hole in the Appalachian section of the map at this point were the states of WVa and KY. Filling them in completes the cycle of Appalachian regions that Clinton can expect to win overwhelmingly. Again, why this is, I have no idea but it is so clearly regionally delineated that I feel I can say that with good confidence that Obama has a problem among Appalachian voters (and I say this as a strong Obama supporter).
At this point in this long race, Obama has won in predominantly white states on the west coast, the plains, the midwest, and the southeast. This demonstrates a breadth of support that is not shaken by the mysterious loss of support in Appalachia. It is foolish to suggest that because Obama seems to not connect with voters in Appalachia that he can't win the general, or even that he wouldn't be as strong a candidate as HRC.
But is it so cut and dried? In fact, Obama has been winning white working class voters all over the country, in lesser numbers than Sen Clinton perhaps, but in significant numbers nonetheless. He has also been winning majorities of the white vote in college towns and high tech centers nationwide. In Appalachia there appears to be many fewer of those sorts of voters, and many more of the blue collar demographic and he seems to therefore be winning a significantly lower total of the white vote there.
So what can be gleaned from this? It is it regional or economic issues that are driving the working class white vote away from Obama in Appalachia? And why do so many Clinton supporters think that it is fair game to extrapoate the results in WVa to the nation as a whole?
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