Can you explain Virginia to me?

Factual Questions
21

In states with high proportions of black residents, the issue of politics might hinge on the whites. Virginia does have a significant black population, notably in the Richmond area, but the state’s overall politics is teetering on the edge of the blue-red divide, because the white voters (1) started to go Republican in the mid-20th century, and (2) are slowly inching towards the Democrats now. In a state like Mississippi, the white population is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican, so even though it has a larger proportion of black residents than any other state, it is a solid red state.

West Virginia has a very small black population. It has been a historically Democratic state, but has been moving right in the last few years. West Virginia was also never part of the Confederacy. Indeed, it was carved out of Virginia for the very reason that it didn’t want to join the Confederacy.

That’s not saying you won’t see Confederate flags in West Virginia. I used to see Confederate flag stickers on the back of trucks in Ohio routinely. I can’t remember the last time I saw one in Virginia.

22

Thought I might provide a bit of more general historical background that may be useful (if you don’t already know it). The South, while traditionally conservative, was also traditionally solid Democrat, due in some measure to the fact that the first Republican President was a certain A. Lincoln. In recent decades, however, the South = Democrat equation has dissolved to a large extent.

23

I’ll address all the claims as someone who is very familiar with both states:

Poverty
Virginia Median Income: $59,562 (9th of 50)
West Virginia Median Income: $38,029 (48th of 50)

Black Population
Virginia: 20.5%
West Virginia: 3.49%

Unemployment
Virginia: 7.2%
West Virginia: 9.3%

Nat’l Unemployment Rate: 9.7%

Persons Without Health Insurance
Virginia: 13.2%
West Virginia: 15.5%

United States: 15.3%

Literacy
From checking the internet I’ve found that we’ve done two major literacy studies in 1992 and 2003, and we’ve also had census surveys about literacy. The results that I’ve seen on the web and the responses to them indicate that there may not actually be any standard or accept measure of the literacy rate of the United States as a whole or of any of the individual states collectively. It seems a lot of the argument hinges on what one considers “literate” to mean.

Party Affiliation
West Virginia Republican: 28.97%
West Virginia Democrat: 55.08%

The West Virginia Senate has 26 Democrats and 8 Republicans
the West Virginia House of Delegates has 69 Democrats and 31 Republicans

The Governor of West Virginia is currently a Democrat, but the position changes political parties somewhat frequently.

West Virginia voted for John McCain in 2008, and George W. Bush in 2004 and 2000. Prior to that West Virginia virtually always voted Democrat in U.S. Presidential elections.

Both U.S. Senators from West Virginia are Democrats (very long serving Democrats, Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd.)

Two of the U.S. House members from West Virginia are Democrats, and one is a Republican.

You do not register by party in Virginia.

The Virginia Senate has 22 Democrats and 18 Republicans.
The Virginia House of Delegates has 39 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 59 Republicans

The Governor of Virginia is currently a Republican, but that position changes political parties frequently.

Virginia voted for Barack Obama in 2008 at the Presidential level and George Bush in 2004.

Both U.S. Senators from Virginia are Democrats.

6 of the U.S. House members from Virginia are Democrats, and 5 are Republican.

Test Scores
Virginia ACT: 21.7
West Virginia ACT: 20.7

Nat’l Average ACT: 21.1

Virginia SAT: 1025
West Virginia SAT: 1029

Nat’l Average SAT: 1021

(Note, SAT scores are from 2006 and are based the sum of the Reading and Math scores, each of which had a maximum score of 800 for a composite score maximum of 1600. Since 2006 the scoring has changed in terms of what number constitutes a “perfect score” and new sections of the test have been added, I didn’t see any numbers online for the new test.)

I’ll also note that SAT/ACT are strictly used for college admissions, so High School students disinterested in attending college may not take the tests. There are standardized tests that I believe all schools have to administer as part of No Child Left Behind, to all High School students. Those would be a better reflection of “test scores” for the students of a state, but I could not find any results for those online.

24

Thanks Martin Hyde, I think the side by side will go a long way to helping me keep them straight, I appreciate all the work you put into that, it did help!

25

A few thoughts on these issues from a guy (me) who grew up in the South, and now lives in Canada. Here’s how I translate these places in my head.

Virginia had the capitol for most of the Confederacy’s existence, and some of the bloodiest battles of the civil war were fought there. When thinking about Virginia and her civil war heritage, remember Quebec, and Je me souviens. In fact, since Virginia borders DC, the parallel with Quebec isn’t bad, stretching from Arlington (Hull, Quebec) to the more rural areas paralleling Rimouski.

West Virginia succeeded from Virginia when the Confederacy left the Union. WV has mountains, scenery, coal miners and music, but is otherwise a very poor state. The Appalachians run through most of WV, making most of the state mountainous, challenging education transportation, and the provision of basic services. It would be easy to compare it to Newfoundland, with it’s resource based economy, breathtaking beauty, outports and musical heritage.

26

For what it’s worth, you could have answered all the questions in the OP about both Virginia and West Virginia by checking the Wikipedia entries on the states.

27

But he wouldn’t have gotten my translation from American stereotypes to Canadian stereotypes. Worth the price of admission right there, I’d say, plus the bonus that I’ll likely soon be pitted by someone from Virginia, West Virginia, Newfoundland or Quebec.

28

I think that’s going a bit overboard on the cultural atmosphere of Virginia. You get much more of that never forget stuff in the Deep South – South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, even Texas is more rebel flag wavin’ than Virginia.

29

This touches on a lot of ugliness in the South that dates back to the era immediately after the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the North imposed the Reconstruction on the South to ‘de-Confederateize’ it, much the same way we would later ‘de-Nazify’ postwar Germany. This included giving and enforcing black voting rights: The Army actually took effective control to make sure freed slaves who had just gained the de jure right to vote would actually have the de facto right to vote. This lead to a number of blacks being elected to all levels of government, from the local level to the Federal level, and, since Lincoln was a Republican, so were all of them. Thus was the Reconstruction a shining period of racial harmony in this Great Republic (as long as you ignore any races beyond ‘black’ and ‘white’).

Thus was the South’s white population mightily pissed off.

Reconstruction ended in 1877 and old Jim Crow took power in the South. ‘Jim Crow’ refers to a system of laws designed to keep black people in a system as close to slavery as the Supreme Court would allow, which was pretty damned close: Neither blacks nor Republicans stood a chance at getting elected in the South for the largest part of a century after Reconstruction ended, and Southern Democrats benefited from being white, racist, and Democrat. The Solid South was Solidly Democrat.

After World War II, the first serious cracks in Jim Crow started to appear. Blacks who had fought to liberate Munich and Cologne couldn’t get served in restaurants in Memphis and Chattanooga. The Democrats, supported by men like Harry Truman, who desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948, added strong civil rights planks to their platform at this point, alienating Southern Democrats, who split from the party and formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party, better known as the Dixiecrat Party. They rallied Democrats who felt disenfranchised by the enfranchisement of blacks. Ultimately, the Dixiecrats, lead by Strom Thurmond, made a lot of noise but didn’t amount to much. The end result was simply to purge the Democrats of anyone strongly opposed to civil rights legislation.

This has absolutely no modern parallels whatsoever.

When Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, signed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, he said “We [the Democrats] have lost the South for a generation.” That same year, Barry Goldwater became the first Republican to win significant votes in the South by campaigning on an anti-civil rights (nominally “pro-states’ rights”) platform. In 1968, Nixon won the Presidency by carrying all of the South not carried by independent nutcases George Wallace and Curtis LeMay. The Solid South was now playing for the other team.

The Solid South was fractured by Obama in 2008, as he carried Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Whether this fragmentation will persist nobody can tell for sure.

30

acsenray, you must not travel through my part of Virginia. I can’t recall the last day I didn’t see a rebel flag around here.

31

Did you forget about the Split South of '92 and '96?

Also, Carter carried the whole South in '76, except for Virginia.

32

Gotta say, I do love my state for all it’s flaws. It’s got a very interesting slant and history to it, in a very yin-yang sorta way.

33

That’s my point. Virginia is changing, starting with my part of it, but it isn’t going to stop here. The change is starting to spook the rebel flag flyers. McDonnell’s latest brain fart is an early twitch of the death rattle of the Old Virginia.

34

Interestingly enough in the 20s West Virginia and Mississippi were so poor that after the Great Depression hit inthe 30s and FDR put forth his reform programs, those two states had the unique situation that the standards of living actually ROSE during the depression. This was also true for most of Kentucky. Tennessee and Alabama through the TVA also so huge sectors of their states, have their standards of living rise during the 30s. [source: “Poverty In America” Catherine Reef]

35

West Virginia was one of the most beautiful places you can imagine. Even now, much of the damage is where you can’t see it from the low roads. A special on PBS said that 500 mountain tops in the state have been removed like this: This used to be a mountain top. It may take a few seconds to load.

Virginia is beautiful. It has both the mountains and the sea. There is a law that keeps advertising signs to a minimum so that highways are not all cluttered up. (The state roads are particularly pretty.) And on clear days, a slower drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway gives views of the Shenandoah Valley that will make you weep.

36

This is true, but a voter can vote in only one party’s primary election. Although I’m nominally a Democrat, I voted in the Republican Presidential primaries for the last three elections. I’ve lived in Virginia for about 30 of the last 40 years and may well live there again one of these days.

And while Virginia currently has a Republican governor, 28 of the last 35 governors (including the current one’s two immediate predecessors) have been Democrats.

Fun trivia fact: A Virginia governor cannot succeed himself, freeing governors up to act on their own wills without having to pander/be answerable to voters; this makes Virginia governors among the most powerful in the nation. A governor can serve multiple non-consecutive terms, but only two (Patrick Henry and Mills Godwin) have ever done so, at two terms each.

As for the Black population, it’s really clustered around three metropolitan areas, Richmond, Petersburg and Hampton; Virginia has six Historically Black Colleges and Universities, mostly in or near Richmond and Norfolk (West Virginia, by contrast, has two). The rest of the state is mostly White, but Northern Virginia has seen a huge influx of Salvadoreans and has some sizable Korean and Vietnamese enclaves in Fairfax County.

37

While I take Wendell’s point, I could have Googled up some answers there is just no way I’d have had access to the insights this thread has offered. Now I have a burning desire to visit both states! Thank you so much for all you have shared.

38

“… They’re flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn state. Yessir, the South is gonna change! Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways! We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable Age of Reason. Like the one they had in France!

And not a moment too soon, neither. Not a moment too soon. ”
*

39

Holy Hanna!

What do you think was on the front page of the travel section of the local weekend paper?

Beautiful Virginia!
:smiley:

40

Virginians also have the contrarian habit, for some years now, of always electing governors from the opposite party to that which occupies the White House at the moment.