Did Southwest Virginia surprise you last night?

[DINGO Joe]

Just to be a broken record, coal in that region is doomed, not just vs Natural Gas or environmentalism but vs other coal.  When you're a one trick pony and your one trick is going away, what do you do?  Making reasonably choices is rarely at the top of the list.

[DINGO Joe]

You need to consider why people vote the way that they do (I'm sometimes surprised that there's less of that sort of critical analysis of voter behavior here, but whatever). What reason did people in that area have for voting for the Democratic ticket? Once upon a time (not that long ago at all) political tradition would have been a reason, but that's all been pissed away in recent decades. Leaving...? You can't even file this one under the tired heading of 'voting against their interests' because the Virginia Democratic Party manifestly does not represent their interests.

And of course the Republicans don't either, look up any groundbreaking for a NG plant in VA in the last 4 years and McDonnell would be there touting clean burning NG.  He'd give lip service to the importance of coal (blah blah blah) but the fact is that where people live NOVA, Tidewater people given a choice want NG over coal.  Closing the coal plant in Arlington and building a big NG plant in Front Royal is popular.  Closing a coal plant in the Tidewater and building a big NG plant is popular.  Coal is only popular where there are coal miners.  Republicans (and Manchin) will still lie to them so they'll believe the lie.

[DINGO Joe]

Though we shouldn't discount wider cultural issues. From Wikipedia's short but not uninformative bio of Henry Howell:

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Unimaginable from a Democratic politician today.

Have you been to Virginia, in like the last 40 years?

[DINGO Joe]

Democrats still care about things like mine safety and black lung disease (of which there is a scandal going on in WV right now) but from an environmental and economic standpoint it's hard to see any Dem outside of WV and KY touting coal.  Of course. it's hard to see any Rep either.  I mean, almost 3GW of NG  electric generation broke ground when McDonnell was governor, when they go live it means 3GW less of coal.  I guess they just like to lie to coal counties and tell them what they want to hear.

[DINGO Joe]

This is something I put together looking at the counties in southwest VA that actually have coal mines (plus the town of Norton located within Wise County).

I put together the Presidential data of these counties from the last 10 elections. Originally, I was just going to compare them to the state as whole and the country, but Gass and I were looking over it and we thought it would be good to include WV too.

Anywho, this is the Democrats' 2-party share of the vote in the SWVA coal counties compared to their 2-party vote in VA, WV and the rest of the country.



Some of the obvious observations I made; others are welcome:

- Reagan narrowly lost these counties in 1984.
- 2000 was the first year where these counties were more R than the country.
- The SWVA coal counties, up until 2008 were actually more D than WV.

Well, I took a slightly more expansive view of the coal region as I included Bristol, Washington and Smyth.  Mainly because  a major coal mining company is headquartered in Bristol--ANR.  In fact, ANR absorbed Massey (which was HQ in Richmond) after the coal mining accident in 2010 that killed 29 miners.

Anyway, I was interested in the what percentage of the total state vote was cast in the coal region over various elections:

1960 Kennedy-Nixon  9.2% (Of course, in 1960 African American registration in Virginia was quite low--WV actually cast more votes than Virginia in 1960.  Coal mining employment peaked in the mid 1950s)

1976 Carter-Ford  5.8%  Carter won much of rural VA (outside of the Shenandoah valley) including the coal region and ran close in NoVa, but was absolutely crushed in metro Richmond and lost the state

2001 Warner-Early  4.1%  Warner won the region, not really as a friend of coal but touting an effort to bring new economic development to the region, like call centers.  Most of the call centers ultimately got outsourced overseas.

2005 Kaine-Kilgore 4.2%  Kaine lost the region to a candidate from the region, and he lost some counties by a wider vote margin than McAuliffe.  Kaine lost Scott by a 6016-2156 margin.  McAuliffe lost Scott by 4001-1158 margin.  Kaine dominated NoVa and won metro Richmond and won the election.

2012 Obama-Romney 3.3%  As graphed by Miles, Obama lost by about 45 points.

2013 McAuliffe-Cooch 3.1%  Overall the turnout in the Governors race was about 58% of the turnout in 2012.  Coal country couldn't match that turnout, with a couple of counties even falling below 50%.  Either lack of enthusiasm or loss of voters

So there you have it.  Coal country in VA (as defined by me, Miles counties/city plus Bristol, Washington and Smyth) makes up about 3% of the vote in Virginia.

[DINGO Joe]

Well, I took a slightly more expansive view of the coal region as I included Bristol, Washington and Smyth.  Mainly because  a major coal mining company is headquartered in Bristol--ANR.  In fact, ANR absorbed Massey (which was HQ in Richmond) after the coal mining accident in 2010 that killed 29 miners.

This is what I was going by.

There aren't any actual mines in the counties you added.

Nothing wrong with how you chose your counties, and I explained why I chose to add Bristol and Washington.  Smyth is a little more of an iffy choice.  I added it because it's voted  more like the coal counties than the counties closer to the Roanoke--Blacksburg region.  The coal counties had low percentages for Sarvis and pretty much straight ticket voting while counties around Roanoke--Blacksburg had higher Sarvis percentages and swung more from race to race.

I would guess if you excluded Bristol, Washington and Smyth, then the coal counties cast about 2% of the VA vote.  I'd guess coal counties in WV cast about 2/3 to 3/4 of the state's votes.