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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Swing State Roundup Redux
Posted by DavidNYCTAP had a new Purple People Watch column out last week. It's almost entirely about the Senate races shaping up in the various battleground states.
Meanwhile, Slate has slowly continued its state-by-state series. I should say very slowly: In a month, they've only done two states. Gotta pick up the pace, fellas. Unfortunately, they've changed authors for the latest installment. The tolerable Chris Suellentrop wrote the first piece (on Missouri), but now they have the odious Lord Saletan penning the current piece on West Virginia. Maybe I'll wade through it (it's a three-part "diary" format) at some point. Or maybe I won't.
One really frustrating thing is the Economist's swing state series. All of the articles seem to wind up behind their subscription wall eventually. But for a brief period of time, they sometimes provide a link to the story for free - and that link seems to never expire. I was able to dig up working links for their entries on Pennsylvania and New Mexico. If you can extract links to any other stories in this series, please post `em here.
UPDATE: Okay, so I decided to read Saletan's WV diary, and it's not half-bad. It's pretty striking how conservative West Virginia is - striking because the state has so often voted Democrat in the past, and there's a good chance it'll do so again this year. The trick, says Saletan, is to appeal to protectionist sentiments and to demonstrate appropriate fealty to the military, something war veteran Kerry can actually do.
But Saletan does make one (pretty glaring) error. He says that West Virginians respect authority and have switched to the GOP when a Republican incumbent was running for re-election. (WV went red in `56, `72 and `84). The big problem with this thesis is `92, when incumbent Bush p��re lost. And back then, I'm willing to bet that economic issues did old number 41 in - just like they might once again.
UPDATE: Carl in the comments provides a link for the Economist's Arizona piece. I had also previously posted a link to the inaugural Ohio article.
Posted at 04:28 PM in Arizona, General, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia | Technorati
Comments
One thing that keeps getting left out of the "surprise" about W. Virginia voting Democrat is that in addition to its military heritage it has a big union heritage. My understanding is that it was a mining state and the miners were all unionzed. A strong labor candidate seems to do well there. In this respect, it seems to run counter to most of the country. Many states are fiscally conservative and socially liberal (for instance, Arnold adopts this stance in California) but W. VA is perhaps more socially conservative and fiscally liberal.
However, a populist stance was not much help to Gore last time...
Posted by: hastings14 at July 1, 2004 11:38 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
WV may be socially conservative, but remember that the *most* socially conservative area (the Coalfield, home to Robert Byrd and Nick Rahall) is the most *Democrat* part of the state...
Televangelistic GOPers are hated more than patronising jerks like Saletan!
The reason why Gore lost in 2000 was because turnout in the coalfield dropped sharply (while rising in the rest of the state). The key to a Dem win in WV is a good turnout in the Coal District (interestingly, in the VA primary some of Kerry's best counties were VA's Appalachian coal counties).
Manchin's coat-tails from the Gubernatorial race help a hellofalot in that respect.
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To hastings14: Gore did not run a populist campaign. He had his moments (note that when he did his poll numbers actually went up) but overall his campaign was geared to appealing to "Soccer Moms" and other such mythical groupings that apparently live in the vast suburban sprawl of certain parts of the US.
Posted by: Al at July 2, 2004 08:53 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
But Saletan does make one (pretty glaring) error. He says that West Virginians respect authority and have switched to the GOP when a Republican incumbent was running for re-election. (WV went red in `56, `72 and `84). The big problem with this thesis is `92, when incumbent Bush p��re lost. And back then, I'm willing to bet that economic issues did old number 41 in - just like they might once again.
It also fails to explain why WV voted Republican in 2000.
Posted by: anon at July 25, 2004 05:44 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
The reason Gore lost was very simple: Karl Rove's campaign for Bush convinced West Virginians that Gore was going to take your gun and that he was pro-choice. The end
Posted by: Manchineer at October 14, 2004 09:24 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment