Talk Elections

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/federal-inmate-keith-judd-receiving-sizable-percent-of-vote-in-west-virginia-democratic-primary/

Surely this result won't surprise too many here but still, lol.

Did this guy literally get 40% just because he was the only other name on the ballot, or did he actually do something to get the 40%?

LOL West Virginia "Democrats"

So far, Obama lost Boone, Clay, Gilmer, Hardy, Lincoln, Logan, Mingo, Tucker, Webster and Wyoming Counties.  Still not much love for Obama in Appalachia.  

Meanwhile, Romney had his best showing of the night in West Virginia, nearly cracking 70%.  Anyone who thinks Romney will be a horrible candidate for West Virginia is wrong.  Romney's most important qualification is that he's not Obama.  If a federal inmate could get 40% against Obama in a Democratic primary, I'd be shocked if Romney doesn't win West Virginia by double digits.

He was born with white skin, which experts believe gave him about a 37 point bump.

Wow desperate much West Virginia?

These are the people Snowstalker wants Democrats to cater to.

So did anyone know anything about him other then he was white? At least some of Obama's other opponents had a little more information that voters could go on.

Jesus Christ. Looks like any people saying Romney would do poorly in West Virginia in the general should re-evaluate. Romney simultaneously did better in WV than IN & NC.

I'm not even sure if they knew that.  But they did know that he's not Obama, which is all that really matters.  Obama's not all that popular in Appalachia, especially coal country.

This is exactly why WV is a joke "state"

Haha, Judd is at 63% in Mingo County.

It was Obama's worst county in the 2008 West Virginia Primary not even getting 8%.

If West Virginia goes Republican, and not just at the presidential level, I would have only two words to offer to our West Virginia Dixiecrat friends -good riddance!  They're a better fit in the GOP than they ever were as Democrats.  They ought to join the rest of the South and finally make their long-delayed realignment. 

Obama isn't winning a single county in November.

If you look at the raw vote totals, Judd actually has more votes than Romney (who is close to 70% in the R primary). haha.

If you combine the two parties in Mingo County, we get:

57.6% Judd
35.2% Obama
5.1% Romney

Obviously this isn't terribly meaningful given registration differences, etc... but some smart ass always has to chime in so I feel obligated to add this disclaimer to preemptively shut them up.

To be fair, statewide Judd currently has just under 70 000 votes, while Romney is just under 73 000. Obama is just over 102 000. So Romney's ahead by a nose.

Probably not.  He won 7 counties in 2008, including Morgantown's (WVU) Monongalia, Jefferson in the Eastern Panhandle and some Southern West Virginia counties that have voted Democratic for decades.  My guess is he'll still win a few counties.  It will be interesting to see if the coal country holdouts that voted for Obama in 2008 flip this time, given Obama's anti-coal policies. 

I now have KA, AK, NE, ND, SD, OK, ID, UT, WY and WV as the only state that Mitt wins east of the Mississippi.

He'll probably lose Boone county

Thread title is obvious anti-Obama trolling. Judd isn't just any federal prisoner; he's a former member of the Federation of Superheroes!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel.html

Um. Of course Romney's going to win WV easily, but his doing well today reflects more on how tiny and united the WV Republican party is than how much love the nominal Dem who is the median voter has for Romney.

Alright, this guy actually sounds pretty cool.

There's still an additional state that might join OK and WV:

Arkansas

There's not only "Uncommitted" on the ballot, but also John Wolfe.

Obama might get only 50-60% here as well.

Check this out.

Favorite food: I forgot.

http://votesmart.org/candidate/biography/15574 (http://votesmart.org/candidate/biography/15574)

He stopped being a superhero in 1982?  Was there a kryptonite epidemic that year or something?

I'm hoping that at least one state will actually vote against Obama in the primary... that would just be awesome :P

So this guy is basically a white version of Alvin Greene?

Why is this guy even allowed to be on the ballot ?

Aren't prisoners in the US usually not even allowed to vote ?

At least John Wolfe is actually to the left of Obama (and, you know, not an inmate).

This is actually pretty funny. I mean, you could look at it from a more serious point of view, the way in which it shows the distance between the political system and people in an economically distressed region and so on, or you could just sit back and grin inanely at 40% for a federal prisoner against an incumbent President. Let's do the latter. ;D

40% of WV Democrats would vote for a guy named John Spiderman (who turns out to be a black drug dealer), just to piss off Obama. Because they have no clue who this Spiderman guy is.

I'm laughing so hard right now.

No one turned out, and Obama will mathematically win about 70% or more of Democrats in 2012. "Catering" doesn't necessarily mean adopting social conservatism; it means waiting until the GOP becomes more socially liberal/libertarian (which is inevitable) and then moving more towards economic left-populism through a coalition of minorities and working-class whites.

I never had any doubts Romney is going to landslide in West Virginia. Simply because he is not Obama.

Did Judd win any delegates?

If they didn't flip in 2008, they're not flipping this year. Given current polling and Obama's more populist campaign, he'll get 44-45% in West Virginia, which obviously is bad for a Democrat but marginally better than 2008.

There are 180 electoral votes between the Potomac and Rio Grande rivers; Romney will get every one of them.  That means he needs only 89 more (a 269-269 tie will give the GOP nominee the win in a Congressional vote).

Has someone put this hilarious map together?

BTW...I'm working on a DEM primaries map from this year...even though the info for some states is hard to come by...so I'll be posting that soon...

If he did they'll be taken away (just like the non-Obama delegates in Oklahoma and Louisiana).

And you guys wonder why I said Obama wont even break 30% in West Virginia this November.

The 41% for Judd is wholly dislike of Obama.  Pretty funny.

Mingo County has 17K registered Dems and only 3K registered Repubs.  Closed primary, so of course Dems have a higher turnout.  Statewide it's 53% Dem and just 27% Repub.

Obama had been the first Democrat to lose Mingo since McGovern in 72. 

Right now, I wouldn't count on Romney winning Virginia, and it's very difficult to see a path to 270 (or 269) for him without it.

I wouldn't count on Romney winning NC or FL, either. If you want to say he's favored, in spite of the current polling, I can see that argument. But they're not sure things, by any means.

Non-sequitur

Not that low. Based on polling, I don't see him below 40-41% barring utter collapse. Based on Obama's numbers in these counties in 2008 and the general, he really has nothing to lose other than a guaranteed base. What's really needed is for Manchin to publicly support Obama (he privately does already, but he's clearly too much of a coward). He'll still win easily given his overall popularity and that Byrd was among Obama's greatest supporters, but clearly he's a selfish jerk who wants to win 70% instead of 65%.

Anyone have a map for this?

Ah, West Virginia...

44-45%  I actually laughed out loud when I read that

That seems completely reasonable, given that it's barely an increase from 2008.

Didn't even know it was legal for inmates to be on the ballot...

How did this guy get on the ballot? Is it really easy for anyone to get on the ballot in WV, or did he have wealthy financiers who ponied up the tab in a likely effort to embarass the President?

In any event, joke result, of course, but still a bit disturbing.

But as has been noted, Obama still got far more votes than Romney statewide. Just an FYI for anyone who wants to use this result as somehow predictive of November.

He was an organizer for the Homeless Peoples Voting Rights Association when he was 10, and founded World Peace Through Musical Communications Skills when he was five.  You have to admit that's impressive.

There's a guy a couple of posts above you who thinks Obama won't break 30% in WV, which is...

.....Mountain Mama....

link (http://www.sheboyganpress.com/usatoday/article/39225377?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs)


It's a tough decision, considering that Obama's opponent is promising world peace through musical communication skills.

Joke senator from joke state.

Why is Manchin so lame? Rockefeller is certainly no liberal, but there's a huge ideological gap between the two.

I just don't understand why West Virginia is still a democratic state. It seems they would have followed the rest of the south and switched allegiance to the GOP years ago.

Clearly the democratic party has become too progressive for them. Maybe 50 years ago the heart of the party lay in the small towns of West Virginia and the south, but now it resides in places like New England, inner cities and wealthy suburbs. The rest of the south sensed this shift years ago.

Yet, now WV has opted for the awkward position of electing senators and congressman who are almost constantly at odds with the base of the party- so you end up with Senators like Joe Manchin who aren't even sure if they'll vote for his party's nominee for president.

Folks in WV want their democrats to be pro life, anti gay, war hawks, conservative on immigration, fundamentalist christian, and friendly to coal and other big businesses. Now- I think the Democratic party has a big tent, but it's still not big enough to house a democrat like that who would be much more at home with the Republicans.

Might Obama have lost this primary post-marriage announcement? lol.

WV is unlike the rest of the south because a) it's pro-union, b) lacks racially polarized politics except when imported from a federal level, and c) lacked a well-off suburban or transplant population to form the nucleus of a Republican party.

did their Great-Great-Grandfathers registered them as democrats in about 1868 and no one has bothered to switch? LOL. The Union dynamic is interesting.  These are the people the democrats are orphaning off and the republicans are slowly gobbling them up.         

You Democrats who actually think Obama will improve in West Virginia are beyond delusional.  You're down right loony. 

Maps plz?

()

They really are.

There is ample evidence that Obama will plummet in WV, we just don't know how much.
Gallup lists his approval in WV at 32.7%  That's a 10.5% drop from his vote share just right there.  I think it's likely that WV will have pitiful turnout this November.  Those who are regular Dems who don't like Obama will either vote Romney or stay home most likely

I think he'll probably get around 31% in WV, but win no counties

for what its worth, someone was on TV last night saying that he did well enough to have a delegate pledged to him at the convention.  

You are quite clearly trolling. Yes, turnout will be down. But it's not as if there were that many conservative "Democrats" that voted for Obama in '08 and now have concluded that he didn't live up to his "chance". They didn't vote for him then, and they won't in November. Obama's floor is probably 40% in WV, though he won't be doing much better than that.

Bear in mind Boone County was Obama's best county in the state in November 2008. He won it by 11%, and there's no reason he'd do much worse this time.

Also, there's no reason he won't do significantly better in the more urbanized counties.

Who in WV who voted for him in 2008 is going to switch to vote for Romney in 2012?

(crickets.)

How many people who were jazzed to vote against him and for McCain-Palin in '08 will have a harder time coming out to vote for Romney?

Possibly larger number.

Now, don't cut this last line out when you quote me - I wouldn't be surprised if Obama did slightly worse, about the same, or slightly better than he did in '08. But I don't think it's bleeding obvious that he's going to do 10+ points worse against a weaker Republican opponent.

I don't think they are Civil War-era Democrats, I think it's mostly a 20th century phenomenon. It's more like the Iron Range than like Mississippi (but not much like either.)

I didn't want to imply "Civil War-era Democrats" as much as "POST Civil-war Dems."  They became part of Dixie AFTER the war.  Combine in an early 20th century history of militant Unionism and no organic local GOP.

You could say it's All About Coal
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/05/09/west-virginia-vote-was-all-about-coal/?mod=google_news_blog
but, I think it's more complicated.  "Coal" actually simplifies pretty complex issues now that I think about it. 

They apparently have no real state GOP party.  Thus, the state dem party maneuvers into the best position it can, which to an outsider looks like the GOP platform.  Odd Quarks for sure.  Kind of like a time warp / twilight zone.  West Virginia would probably be more like Kentucky if Coal and Union(history) wasn't so dominant.   

Also, why would Obama be doing worse in West Virginia if he's doing better in Kentucky?

You're absolutely right. Because of Romney being a big-business elitist Republican, Obama will likely gain 5% in all the Southern states, especially considering all of his policies have been very beneficial to Southern voters (Just look at how the economy down there has blossomed in the past 3 years!). Romney will still probably win West Virginia, but it'll only be by a couple percentage points, not the landslide delusionalists are saying.

The only difference being that voters in the iron range still came out for Obama and supported him about as much as any other democratic presidential candidate. Obama still dominated this region in 2008 and there was no swing against him as there was in WV.

WV Coal and MN Iron democrats may be similar, but only one group wasn't terrified by the color of his skin and his name.

I'm confused why Prisoner Dude won Hardy County.  It had a greater swing toward Obama in '08 than the nation as a whole.  Although it was also John Edwards's best county in the primary (16%) and among Obama's worst (43rd of 55).

but another difference is that the Iron Range didn't swing against Kerry in 2004.

I meant to compare to rural/republican Kentucky that elects republican federal officers and state legislators.   

I'll repeat that
the state dem party maneuvers into the best position it can, which to an outsider looks like the GOP platform.
Thus,
you get odd results in a national race that does not require a state party organisation.     

I don't understand your reply.

I don't know what you don't understand so I would need you to help me help you in order to help you... 

As for Hardy county,
3,000 voters who vote
65% for Robert Byrd and
70% for George W. Bush 

"I'll repeat that
the state dem party maneuvers into the best position it can, which to an outsider looks like the GOP platform.
Thus,
you get odd results in a national race that does not require a state party organisation.     "

I'm not sure how this is a reply to what I said...mis-quote?

That area in the northeast of the state, which is traditionally Republican and agricultural, has a small but growing population of transplants from the DC area who are more affluent than the local population. The combination of numbers you cite suggests that some of them voted for Obama but are not participating in Democratic primaries, perhaps due to the state's closed primaries.

They have a transplanted Quad Graphics plant in that area as I recall.

Alcon, I thought I might spark some broad insight into the dynamic, but I now guess/realize you are just asking a specific question about the specific county.       

Ahh, I understand now.  Sorry AN -- didn't mean to shoot you down; I was interpreting too narrowly.

Manchin intends to be President of an independent West Virginia one day.

John Hardy was a desperate little man, he carried a razor [later versions: two guns] every day.

Okay, came across this little gem about Judd's policy positions:


And there you have it. The guy got 40% of the vote without a campaign budget because his economic policy ideas are infinitely closer in line with the average voter than Obama's and Romney's.