Talk Elections

I can't believe I didn't catch this earlier, but anyway...

I think Knott was Kerry's second-best county in Kentucky in 2004, and Al Gore's best in 2000. So I think it's pretty clear McCain didn't win it by 8%, and that the results listed here are backwards.

You don't just go from a 29% win for Kerry to an 8% win for McCain.

I called Knott County.  They're correct.  And there were bigger swings in the country, unsurprisingly also in countries that produced coal.  The biggest was a 40-point swing to McCain in Coal County, Oklahoma.

coal country + racism + few blacks + old poor whites with no investments = massive swing to McCain

There are only about fifty people employed in mining in Coal County.

So, it's an agricultural processing county mostly?  What's up with that?

Wow, Coal County even voted for Mondale.

And why would coal country hate Obama so much (besides racism)? I can understand why they disliked Gore so much, but not much reason to hate Obama more than Kerry. Not that McCain is a big friend of the coal industry either.

Maybe the Republicans did better this time because Bush wasn't their candidate, and folks in Kentucky know Bushstink when they see it. Still, an entire county can't just have a 37% swing to the Republicans when the rest of the country had a 10% swing to the Democrats.

Miller County, GA had a 161.11 point swing to the Republican in 1964 while the country as a whole had a 22.42 point swing to the Democrat.

Why should there be surprise that an utterly working class area voted for Mondale?

Any idea what recounts for the ridiculous swing, Al?

I shouldn't have jumped to a conclusion from the swing size, the county name, and the county seat being at "Coalgate" :P

Just a shocking swing from voting for Mondale to >70% McCain.

Also if you trust the media and people like benconstine, it should be a giant shock since that county supposedly should be full of these so-called "Reagan Democrats".

Presumably it used to be a mining area. There's a town in the county called Coalgate. Perhaps there was a Mr Coal, but it is, just about, on the main Oklahoma coalfield. Mining communities do often last longer than large scale mining; it's been decades since there's been much mining in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, say.

More important is the fact that it's in Little Dixie.

I was fascinated to discover that there was still genuine mining going on in the area (well, northern Schuylkill County) from a friend who actually works in one that produces a decent amount of coal.

Sorry, but it is the case.  There were many strange swings in elections and this happens to be one of them.

I want to see this in 2012.

That is not results who are backwards, but the inhabitants of that place.

Keep living in fantasyland about the voting trends of your region, pal

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Eastern Kentucky was pretty close  to [but not on] the epicenter of the insane anti-Obama shift of Appalachia.  Look at Arkansas, for example, at its entire state-wide swing despite a 10% swing to the Democrats.  If you break it down county-by-county, you're going to get a lot higher results in select counties since the state-wide number is averaged out.

And Obama was running ads in Kentucky!

Them folks just don't like Change

The parts of Kentucky where Obama was actually running ads swung to him (as did the state as whole btw.)

I thought he was running ads everywhere in Kentucky for the last week or so, just to blow his cash advantage a little more and help pressure the RNC to defend Mitch instead of McCain

No part of Arkansas is in Appalachia.

Coal County was, in fact, named neither for a Mr Coal nor for the coal to be found there, but for its pre-existing main settlement of Coalgate. ;D
Which, however, is named for the coal to be found there.

Word, I know.  It's a parallel example showing a similar phenomenon which allows for the clearest example of counter-national swings.

If you want to see results that definitely are backwords between two candidates, see http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/2006g/gen06s.html and scroll down to North Yarmouth in Cumberland County, Glenburn and Kingman Township in Penobscot County, and Monson in Piscataquis County.  What do you think the chances are that those are the four municipalities where there was a descrepency in the reported votes for Slavick (an anti-war Independent from Portland; just the type who would appeal to voters in small northern Maine towns and a Portland exurb [sarcasm]) and Snowe?  Snowe's one-vote loss in Grand Isle in the St. John Valley is believable (she lost it by one vote in 2000 as well, although Collins carried it this year by 10 points which shows how badly Tom Allen did in northern Maine), and her only getting 45% in No. 27 Township in Washington County (still carrying it by one vote over Slavick, 14 to 13, with 4 votes for Democrat Jean Hay Bright) is odd but results like that can happen in places with such a small number of votes.