Appalachia
Josh Marshall has a good explanation of why Obama lost West Virginia last night which busts the “only Clinton can win white, working-class voters” myth :
There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama’s problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama’s problem isn’t with white working class voters or rural voters. It’s Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he’s getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.
In so many words, Pennsylvania and Ohio have big chunks of Appalachia within their borders. But those regions are heavily offset by non-Appalachian sections that are cultural and demographically distinct. West Virginia is 100% Appalachian. If you look at southeastern Ohio or the middle chunk of Pennsylvania, Obama did about the same as he’s doing tonight in West Virginia.
Josh includes this handy map of all the counties where Clinton won by > %65, which neatly corresponds to the Appalachian region of the country :
The unfortunate thing about this map for Clinton is that her biggest strength seems to be in places where Democrats are unlikely to win in November, regardless of how well she does in the primaries. Compare that map to the electoral breakdown of the last two presidential elections :
The Clinton campaign may want to fool itself into thinking wins this week and next are indicative of a weakness on Obama’s side, but her heavy support in the Appalachian region makes it clear that back-to-back wins in WV and KY are simply scheduling flukes, like Obama’s post Super Tuesday winning streak. Now if Clinton can win big in some of those remaining greyed-out states (OR, MT, SD), then she’ll have something to really brag about.
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That analysis is exactly right. You can look at the vote west of the Blue Ridge in Virginia and see that. Obama only carried cities and counties west of the Blue Ridge with upscale whites— Roanoke, Montgomery County (Virginia Tech, Radford Univ), Rockbridge (VMI and W and L) and so on up the Valley.
Obama needs to defeat McCain with independents and disaffected Republicans and there are a lot of them.
Comment by Peter777 — May 14, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
Very interesting! US election commentators should take more interest in coastal-inland/hill territory divides. In Oregan, for instance.
Comment by Parsons — May 15, 2008 @ 3:07 am
[…] Setting aside the real possibility that Edwards hadn’t actually decided which candidate to endorse, it seems that the timing of the endorsement couldn’t be better for Obama, coming as it does right after a shellacking in West Virginia that Hillary Clinton will present as evidence that Obama can’t close the deal with those prized hard-working white voters. What better moment to maximize the value of a stamp of approval from the only white populist around? Obama knows that, and you’d have to imagine that Edwards does too. The delegate situation is settled, whether Clinton acknowledges it or not; Obama is playing a longer game now, and the Edwards endorsement is part of that strategy. Think of it as an Appalachian inoculation. […]
Pingback by Edwards = White people! | Waveflux — May 15, 2008 @ 8:07 am