Yeah, some people are really confused about all of this.
West Virginians of all political parties are extremely anti-Obama.
The reasons for this are varied, although I think King Coal is probably the “paramount” reason.
West Virginia has a closed primary, if you are not a registered Democrat something like 20+ days before the primary, you could not receive a Democrat ballot–you would be given a Republican ballot if you were registered Republican. I think independents could vote for either (but not both), not as sure on that one though. I know Republicans could not vote in the Dem primary though, unless they went through the effort of changing their registration.
West Virginia is massively Democrat in fact, with 4/5 of its Reps in the U.S. Congress (2 House + 2 Senate) being Democrats, its Governor being Democrat, and massive majorities in both houses of its State legislature being Democrat. West Virginia Democrats aren’t the same as California Democrats, but most of them are life long Democrats and to pretend that the people voting against Obama in the primary weren’t real Democrats shows a deep ignorance of West Virginia politics.
WV Democrats are not registered Democrat but “vote for Republicans in every election” they vote for Democrats in pretty much every election they vote in, with the singular exception of the Presidential election (and that is not true of all Democrats in WV, and it has only been true since 2000.)
While I don’t have scientific information, evidence from the Charleston, WV newspapers suggests most people voted for Judd to vote “against Obama” as a protest vote. In one article a woman says her plan was to vote for Judd to protest Obama, until she found out he was a Federal inmate, after she heard that she decided to not register a vote for either candidate. So Judd’s getting votes is most likely a combination of an anti-Obama sentiment among WV Democrats combined with complete ignorance over who Judd was.
It also isn’t particularly indicative of anything that Romney barely received more total votes than Judd. In WV most State level races are locked for the Dems from day one, so the “real” election is the Democratic primary. For example their Agriculture Commissioner race and most of their State Senate and House of Delegate races you see many candidates in the Democrat primary but only one candidate in the GOP primary. This is because the Dem primary is the “real” election, and almost all of the people who win that will win the general. The GOP primary is not much contested because “token” candidates get put up there just to keep their hat in the ring, but they are truly just sacrificial lambs in most of these races.
Since Democrat registrations outnumber GOP by like 2-to-1, and the GOP has little reason to even turn out for their primary this year (uncontested Presidential primary at this point with most other races only having one candidate), it’s no surprise total Democrat votes are way higher. But in the general a lot of those Democrats will not be voting for Obama and he’ll lose the state to Romney.
Not true according to Wikipeadia, who says “Fifteen states – Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming – have semi-closed primaries that allow voters to register or change party preference on election day.”
I’ll go with the West Virginia Secretary of State as a more authoritative source of information on WV election law than Wikipedia:
[quote] Does it matter which party I choose?
[ul]
[li]The important thing to remember is that your choice will affect your options of voting for partisan candidates in the Primary Election when parties make their nominations. Also, if you ever decide to run for office, you may only file for nomination in the party in which you are registered. [/li][li]West Virginia has a “closed” primary, which means that people registered in one party cannot vote for candidates in another party. At the Primary Election, if you have listed a major party choice on your voter registration, you will be given the ballot of that major party. You will not have the right to receive the ballot of a different party.[/li][li]If you register with no party affiliation, you will be given a non-partisan ballot in the Primary Election. The political parties have the right to decide who may participate in their nominating processes. [/li][li]The Democratic, Mountain and Republican Parties allow any voter who is not registered with an official major party to request their ballot for the Primary Election, but you have to ask the poll workers for a particular party ballot.[/li][/quote]
From what I observed the beginning of the downward slide for Democrat presidential candidates in West Virginia started with gun control. I know in the 2000 election the NRA ran a ton of radio ads in West Virginia (I could hear some of them from my camp in the mountains on the border w/WV), and hunting and gun rights are huge issues there.
Kerry was hit pretty hard in the state by NRA advertising as well. Obama got the same treatment and even nationwide people spoke about needing to “stockpile their ammo” before Obama took office since he was going to institute various things like “ammo bans” or etc to make it very difficult to own or use guns.
That all explains in part why Gore, Kerry, and Obama never won the general in West Virginia. I think Obama’s catastrophic showing in the primary is the combination of that + the coal issue, which creates the perfect storm.
West Virginia has always been social conservative, most of its important statewide Democrat officeholders have traditionally be pro-life, for example. The power of the unions was so great that that overrode social conservatism in the state for a long time, but manufacturing and mining jobs have been steadily dying off in the state for generations, so those traditional unions are largely gone. In the past decade you’ve seen manufacturing jobs return to the state, but these “new manufacturing” ventures tend to be non-union shops and so haven’t seen any rise in the power of unions in the state.
I think the coal miner vote actually probably went to John Kerry because of unions, but because union power in general is weaker by the year in that state it wasn’t enough to carry the state, now that Obama is firmly against the coal industry that means he loses that support and all the other people that are disinclined to vote for a Democrat President are still disinclined.
So, what we have here is a lot of people (at least a sixth of the state, it looks like) who are registered as Democrats, but who consistently vote for the Republican over the Democrat in the general election. Is it any surprise that such a person would vote for “not-Obama” in the primary?
Big no to the last part. The only Republican these people have probably ever voted for in their lifetimes is John McCain. (As long as we are still talking about the southern coal fields).
The Governor is a Dem. Both houses of the state legislature are overwhelmingly Dem. Both U.S. Senators are Dems. However 2 of 3 Congressmen are Republicans (McKinley is an anomaly and will likely be out as soon as a decent candidate runs, Capito is the daughter of the former popular, but convicted felon, governor Arch Moore) and all elected positions statewide are Dems, except for one Supreme Court justice who was fortunate enough to run against a certified lunatic on the Dem side and still only won by 4 points.
The Southern Coal Fields always vote Dem, always (except for McCain and for Romney this time). The rest of the state usually votes for Dems in statewide offices, but votes GOP nationally, and can be persuaded to vote for state offices.
It is a very conservative, yet very Dem friendly state.
Not really, the biggest unions in West Virginia are related to industries that are tied in with coal mining or usage and Obama’s environmental stance makes him anathema to those groups.
The current Governor and newest U.S. Senator (former Governor Manchin) are both in bed with the big coal unions as well as the coal companies (the current Governor got endorsements from the AFL-CIO and the WV Chamber of Commerce in his election) and both have come out saying they don’t know that they’ll support Obama in the general election.
Coal’s economic impact in West Virginia has been dwindling for years, but its political importance is still almost as strong as it was when it was genuinely the most important (economically and employment-wise) industry in the State.
I was honestly totally unaware Mollohan was driven out of office up in the 1st District, but considering how he was reelected like 50x with barely any opposition I’d agree a half-decent Democrat should be able to take the new guy’s seat. That district is probably the most socially liberal in the State with the big population of academics and such due to the university there.
The Supreme Court Justice (I believe Brent Benjamin) was actually running against someone who as a lower court judge had released a pedophile early, right? And then the pedophile went on to abuse more kids…that’s sort of an anomaly.
Mollohan lost in the Dem PRIMARY in 2010. Mike Oliverio beat him, and subsequently lost in a squeaker in the general election.
Benjamin ran against Warren McGraw who was a sitting Supreme Court justice (now a Wyoming County Circuit Court judge). The pedophile thing didn’t help, but the “Rant in Racine” is what did McGraw in. His speech was filled with lies and half-truths and he ranted like a maniac. Do a search on Youtube for “Rant in Racine” and see the whole speech in its glory…
Most important industry? Hard to say, it’s probably more of a trifecta of coal mining, natural gas drilling, and chemical manufacturing. Up through the early 90s the chemical industry was massive in parts of the State as was the coal industry, but both are in major decline.
The chemical industry directly employs about 10,000 people, mining & mining support activities employ about 28,000 people, gas extraction employs about 3,000 (although these are based on 2008 numbers…the Marcellus boom is going strong so I’m sure this number is a lot higher now.)
But there are some 800,000 employed people in the state, most of them (600,000) work in low paying service sector jobs or for the State government (the largest employer in the State.) The largest private employer is Wal-Mart, who is famously non-union, and even State workers in West Virginia aren’t really unionized. There is a State Employee’s Union that “advocates for their interests” but they have no collective bargaining rights…West Virginia’s public workers essentially are in the situation the Governor of Wisconsin was trying to put his state workers–and they’ve been that way for a long time. The State employee union is really just a lobbying group and can’t do any real organized labor activity. IIRC this all stems from an incident in the 70s when the State transportation workers decided to go on strike during a blizzard to try and get pay raises, and instead there was a massive public backlash that permanently destroyed public employee organized labor in the state.
I guess what gets me is how conservatives are cackling about this, as if it says something about Obama.
No: it says something about conservatives. When your compatriots* are willing to vote for a total stranger (who turns out to be a federal prisoner) instead of voting for Obama, they’ve left the deep end and are swimming over the Marianas Trench.
You shouldn’t be saying, “See, Obama’s such a weak candidate that people will vote for a federal prisoner over him!” You should be saying, “Good Lord, the people who agree with me are so ignorant that they’ll vote for a federal prisoner over Obama!”
The takeaway from this isn’t that Obama’s weak in West Virginia: we already knew that. The takeaway is that the sort of aggressive, spiteful ignorance that has commandeered the Republican party over the last decade is reaching is insidious tendrils into the West Virginia Democratic party as well.
Yes, Republicans: West Virginia Democrats are your compatriots.
George W. Bush also won the state, twice. And even when Clinton won the state, I’m betting it wasn’t by anything near a 2-1 margin. That implies that there are a sizable chunk of voters in the state who do self-identify as Democrats and yet who consistently vote for the Republican for President.
How an inmate get get on the ballot? He has been incarcerated in Texas for more than a decade. Doesn’t that make him a resident of Texas? If not, doesn’t a person who tries to get on the ballot in a state have to have livedin the state for a certain period of time directly before getting on said ballot?
Could I, as California resident, have gotten the ballot in WV?