A few weeks ago, before the North Carolina primary, Jonathan Martin noted the counties in Appalachia that had voted in the Democratic primaries, and Hillary Clinton’s unusually strong performance in these counties as compared to Barack Obama. Since then, we’ve seen additional evidence that this is a specific region that has overwhelmingly preferred Clinton to Obama.
By now, most have probably seen the chart DHinMI posted, showing each of the counties nationwide in which Clinton has won 65% or more of the vote. Putting aside Michigan, where Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, it’s hard not to notice that Appalachia and Clinton’s strongest counties seem to overlap very closely.
Now, it’s possible there’s something unique about Hillary Clinton that has driven lower-income, working-class (no college) whites in this specific region to her campaign in droves, but it seems more likely that there’s something unique about Barack Obama that has done the opposite. In this case, it’s the color of his skin.
I started to explain over the weekend that the distinction is more than just about race, income, rural areas, and education, but rather, is about the Appalachian region in specific. There are other areas in the country that are just as white, just as educated, just as rural, and nearly as poor, but did not give Clinton 40-point margins, suggesting regional attitudes are driving the results.
Indeed, the more Appalachian, the more obvious the trend. Parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania are Appalachian, and those are the parts where Obama struggled most. West Virginia is all Appalachian, and that’s where Obama lost by 41 points.
As Josh Marshall explained, “Obama’s problem isn’t with white working class voters or rural voters. It’s Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he’s getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky. If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.”
So, what’s the matter with Appalachia? Josh, noting that the state is both older, whiter, and the least educated in the nation, puts on the professor’s hat to highlight the history.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, in the middle Atlantic and particularly in the Southern states, there was a long-standing cleavage between the coastal and ‘piedmont’ regions on the one hand and the upcountry areas to the west on the other. It’s really the coastal lowlands and the Appalachian districts. On the other side of the Appalachian mountain range the pattern is flipped, with the Appalachians in the east and the lowlands in the west.
These regions were settled disproportionately by Scots-Irish immigrants who pushed into the hill country to the west in part because that’s where the affordable land was but also because they wanted to get away from the more stratified and inegalitarian society of the east which was built by English settlers and their African slaves. Crucially, slavery never really took root in these areas. And this is why during the Civil War, Unionism (as in support for the federal union and opposition to the treason of secession) ran strong through the Appalachian upcountry, even into Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi.
As I alluded to earlier, this was the origin of West Virginia, which was originally the westernmost part of Virginia. The anti-slavery, anti-slaveholding upcountry seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union. Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the linchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.
This is history. But it shapes the region. It’s overwhelmingly white, economically underdeveloped (another legacy of the pre-civil war pattern) and arguably because of that underdevelopment has very low education rates and disproportionately old populations.
For all these reasons, if you’re familiar with the history, it’s really no surprise that Barack Obama would have a very hard time running in this region.
Expect similar results in six days when Kentucky voters head to the polls.
