Overcoming One‐Party Dominance: How Contextual Politics and West Virginia Helped Put George Bush in the White House

Abstract

In West Virginia it is often said that coal is king. If so, the Democratic Party and organized labor serve as its princess. West Virginia had voted Republican in presidential contests on only three occasions since 1932. If there ever was a one‐party state, West Virginia was it. Yet in 2000, Republican George Bush won the state, thus securing five electoral votes—one more than his eventual margin of victory. This article looks at how this victory came about in light of scholarly questions about how national campaigns select issues on which to campaign in targeted states and how a dominant party can be overcome through such efforts. We propose an answer to these questions that is rooted in the contextual theory of electoral politics and test this theory against qualitative data taken from local and national media and quantitative data in the form of county level election returns.

Mapping Influence: Partisan Networks across the United States, 2000 to 2016

“…In addition, unions remain important in West Virginia. This is unexpected as West Virginian unions continue to be an important actor in state politics (Grossback and Hammock 2003).…”