Despite the poll results many analyses still place Ojeda as the underdog. The Republican’s deeper pockets may prevail.
But dayum!
Update on this race which would be an absurd result if Ojeda wins.
Now duly note while 538’s “lite” gives him a 40% chance, their “classic” is not so much of a chance (90% probable he loses) … still they hedge heavily:
I’m more surprised 538 seems to unaware of how West Virginia is different than the national partisan dynamic would suggest.
Democrats, by voter registration, **still outnumber Republicans by 11 points in WV **even as they continue to lose ground among new registrations. The shift of rural white voters didn’t follow the GOP Southern strategy timeline. It didn’t really start to kick in around 2000. The rigidity of partisan affiliation dictating votes isn’t the same as we’ve come to expect in the rest of the country. Two years ago Ojeda’s politics made him a Trump voter. (I think we can safely say that his vote has swung to the Democrat in his race. 
)
I grew up in Ohio and WV shares many political similarities with Ohio’s Appalachian counties just across the border. They’ve started to shift affiliation on the same timeline as WV. It’s an electorate that is strongly pro-gun and pro-union. The pro-union piece in the midwest generally comes with support for trade protectionist measures like Trump campaigned on. We really need to not think of things in WV or Ohio’s Appalachian counties in terms of the national stereotypes about parties and partisanship.
A pro-gun, pro-union, retired Army officer, who supports first responders (including police), and supports the counterterror campaign against IS is ahead in the polls in WV. I’d be more surprised if he was losing.
He is a good example of the kind of Democrat who can win back valuable ground from Republicans in key states. I was quite surprised when I saw his picture; I was expecting him to look very different based on his name, but of course a surname only tells 1/4 of someone’s ancestry, if that.
Yep. Looks like the voters switched from native populism to progressivism overnight. Almost like there are broad similarities between the statist sub genres.
Nah, I’m a West Virginian. We tend to be socially conservative and economically liberal. I think the best word for West Virginia politics is independent. I think that we feel like we’re the butt of everybody’s jokes and no one gives a rip about us. When that’s your mentality, you tend to distrust institutions and parties. We like bomb-throwers and people who blatantly favor us at everyone else’s expense. Sure, we love America, but we love West Virginia more. We like Trump mostly because he likes us and hates the people that we think hate us. He talks to WV like we’re awesome while national Dems tend to talk about WV patronizingly. It’s not some love of his ideology or policies. I think West Virginians assume that most policies don’t benefit us and when they do it’s accidental. Our over-reliance on coal and extraction mean that our economy is completely out of step with pretty much everywhere else. During the Recession, our economy was fine. Now that everywhere else is great, ours sucks. That makes us feel even more out of step since the focus seems to be on how people everywhere else are doing and not on us.
What has really changed in WV politics that has made the shift redward is that the Blue Dogs died. West Virginians generally like God, Guns and Fetuses. We also like progressive taxation, unions and wealth redistribution. At one time, Blue Dogs let us have both. The national Dems have basically said though that Guns and Fetuses aren’t allowed anymore and God needs to stand in the back and that irks us. We naturally assume that neither party is going to really care about our economic interests, so we’ve become social voters. It could easily switch back if there was some give on the social side of things, but I don’t think that the political culture of the national Dems will allow it, so I would guess we’ll be red for awhile. It sucks for those of us that are blue here though. It really screwed with our politics at the state level.
“West Virginians generally like God, Guns and Fetuses. We also like progressive taxation, unions and wealth redistribution.”
Sounds like an alt-right paradise.
The similarities between Trump’s populism and this type of progressivism are their economics firstly and priority of economics over social considerations secondly. Labor protectionism aka anti-immigration is another key similarity.
I don’t think I would define the alt-right as having a coherent economic policy. Their goals are mostly white nationalism through whatever means possible. If they feel that political winds are blowing liberal economically, then they are happy to tag along. It’s also a mistake to think that their social policies are ‘conservative’ in nature. They typically don’t like God too much, but they do like the idea of cultural Christianity. They are pretty divided on abortion-some oppose it because it gives too much power to women; others like it because it disproportionately gets rid of minorities. They do like their guns though.
If Ojeda wins, the fact that we would have the highest percentage of Hispanics in our congressional delegation (tied with New Mexico) would probably bother them.
The alt-right is not coherent if it even still exists, but broadly speaking from what I have seen, they are down with democratic socialism. Yes, though, they like the idea of Christianity more than God.
I hate to break it to you, but Trump doesn’t like anyone other than himself.
That’s true, but he spends a lot of time here. Far, far more than any President I can ever recall and that speaks to people.
I disagree. The old yellow dogs died off and the younger voters more independent, while still social conservatives, realized that the progressive taxation, unions, and wealth redistribution still left us 49th or 50th in every category. They decided to give the GOP a chance. They will still vote for a “good” Democrat like Manchin or Ojeda.
And that last part should be a note to anyone who might say that West Virginians are a bunch of backwoods, toothless racists. We might elect a guy named Ojeda.
In order to reassure himself that someone out there still likes him. It’s not about you/us. At all.
My impression of the alt right is that they support white nationalism, patriarchy, nativism, etc. but they also support liberal economic policies. They just want them to only apply to whites.
If they only apply to whites, they’re not liberal policies.