Check out these cool Virginia electoral maps by the Roanoke Times. Watch as Northern Virginia goes from solid red in 1980 to solid blue in 2008 (Fairfax County flips in 2004, Prince William and Loudoun flip in 2008). Watch as, simultaneously, far SWVA and the Shenandoah region goes from mostly blue to nearly solid red. Watch as Charlottesville and Albemarle turn blue in 2004. Also, check out swing counties like Nelson, Buckingham, and Prince Edward near C-ville and Albemarle, plus several counties between Fredericksburg and Richmond. There's a great deal of information here, well presented with a "mouse over" feature that allows you to see the data from each county going back to 1980. It's very convenient, much easier to use than the State Board of Elections website. Check it out!
More maps after the "fold"
I clicked each presidential race on the map (great map) and starting with Al Gore our region started persistently going red on presidential elections; one thing that is happening here is the old union families are dying out just like my family. There are less than 200 UMWA members actually working in Va today mining coal, down from several thousand back in the 60s and 70s. That is quite a demographic and political switch. We only go D now for Mark Warner (and also voted for John most of the time) Boucher and the state legislators are solid Ds in districts 2 and 3 and Rs get the rest except for Joe Johnson's district who is a great guy but votes very conservatively All in all, I am thinking flat or hilly, Va's rural states are mostly red and that our region is mostly red for president but not the other races. Gore, Kerry and Obama had one thing in common: very liberal U.S. senators, I think that is the rub here more than race. I cannot explain why other Va rural counties vote mostly R even against moderate Ds, but moderate Ds seem to be our preference.
Interesting analysis, although I don't believe Al Gore - a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) - was particularly liberal. Also, I'd point out that Rick Boucher votes with his party 96.6% of the time, very similar to Barack Obama's 96.0%.
It's interesting to note though the demographic and voting shifts along the 81 corridor cities (e.g. Winchester, Harrisonburg, Staunton, Roanoke, Blacksburg, and Radford). The pro-Dem margins in those cities off-sets the margins in the surrounding counties -- one of the reasons that Webb was also successful in 2006. A large part is probably due to the growth of state universities along 81.
There was a very slight (0.3 percentage points) improvement for Obama over Kerry...
In regards to SW VA, I think it is interesting to point out that Obama ran ahead (albeit very slightly) of John Kerry. He was able to preform as well as Kerry did in many counties and did better than him in areas that I would think are more socially moderate (Montgomery, Roanoke, and Radford). However, we must remember that this very slight improvement for Democrats there come as Obama was making huge gains in other portions of the state. Why did SW VA buck the trend?
The NYT has an interesting map up, showing the shifts in the electorate. The one region of the country where McCain did better than Bush is Appalacia. You know, I just don't get it. The economy is probably hurting these people more than anyone else in the nation (and has been for a while). Every poll showed that people thought Obama was better for the economy and better understood the economic crises. The hot-button social issues like abortion and gay marriage weren't a focus this year, so it is hard for me to conclude that their shift was based on that.
I suppose I should read the NYT article for a little bit of analysis to figure out what happened there.
That Obama faced a clear, severe "hillbilly problem" was obvious early on. The campaign and its supporters did a number of things to address it. Those efforts paid off only very marginally.
grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to tell the difference.
Many good Democrats, and especially some good union people, showed the courage to take on race directly, from western PA to southeast OH through West Virginia, the far southwest of Virginia, and eastern Kentucky and Tennesee.
But in the calm light of this Sunday after the election, honest reflection on the results tells us that an unpleasant truth may have to be accepted. We can hope that the actual accomplishments of Democratic governance will bring those voters back, and put our energy into demanding and helping achieve those changes. If the good results bring back some of those older voters, that will be a nice extra to the substantive improvements in peoples' live. If good results don't make any difference to them, we can, regretfully, go forward without them.
Either way, we have to put our energy into working for an economy that puts people first, for a fair environment for union organizing so that race and other artificial distinctions cannot be used to pit workers against each other.
The vote percentage is out of date too as it's now 52.52 to 46.43 for Obama
Obama just didn't do as well with rural southern whites as Kerry did. Or Dukakis. And certainly less than Gore or Clinton. It was most obvious in the Appalachians because those are all-white areas. Higher A-A turnout clouded the trend in other rural southern counties.
He did better with urban and suburban southern whites especially along the Atlantic coast. An in-migration of Northern whites probably helped the trend.