West Virginian Voting Trends Are Disturbing, But Not Surprising
West Virginian Voting Trends Are Disturbing, But Not Surprising
Changes to the ways Central Appalachians vote (or don't vote) won't be happening any time soon, as disheartening as that is...
Every election cycle in West Virginia, we hear observers breathlessly exasperated about low turnout and the way fairly large majorities of West Virginians who do bother to cast a ballot tend to vote. I’ve been one of those observers more times than I care to admit. It’s a problem. We have a Republican supermajority in our state legislature, for example, enabled by a minority of registered voters. We really need this to change.
Don’t bet on it changing any time soon. Voting patterns like those on display in West Virginia don’t tend to change in one or two election cycles, or even one or two decades. This is a generational, usually multigenerational, phenomenon. There are, in my considered opinion, four key drivers at play here in the way West Virginians overall tend to vote, when they vote at all:
West Virginia’s voters tend to vote like they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires instead of working-class and often poverty-stricken victims of late-stage capitalism. Majorities of those who go to the polls in West Virginia tend to have bought into this quite dated concept, reinvigorated in the Reagan Era, that as long as we’re working hard and do everything we possibly can, riches are just around the corner. They equate the accumulation of capital with the character value of those who accumulate it (or don’t).
West Virginia’s voters tend to vote in ways they think the Christian god would insist. Evangelical Christianity has a great stronghold on the minds and attitudes of many West Virginians, and it shows at the polls. Christian nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, a very authoritarian or “traditionalist” view of the world—these have become core tenets of many West Virginians’ voting habits.
West Virginia’s voters tend to be driven by military and law enforcement service, which they equate unequivocally with duty, honor and patriotism—values they tend to hold dear. West Virginians tend to treat military service, as well as work in law enforcement, as the most highly-regarded vocations deserving of the greatest respect and admiration.
West Virginia’s voters tend to have embraced resource extraction, especially fossil fuels (in particular coal mining), as a most-beloved cultural activity and as core to their identity and values system. A West Virginian may never have stepped foot in a coal mine or helped burn a short ton at a power plant, but in West Virginia King Coal remains as stubbornly as ever upon his throne.
So, what’s it going to take to change the trajectory? How do we go from a state virtually guaranteed to give 2/3 to 3/4 of its popular vote totals to Donald Trump and down-ticket Republicans, for example, to a state where Democrats or even more leftist candidates can win statewide elections again? More than anything, it’ll take time. Time and patience, actually.
It starts with a true working-class renaissance. Only a connection to a movement of working-class solidarity can counter the enormous influence and impact of the capitalist lie that when the rich do well we all excel. We’ve got to return to our century-old roots of organized, multiracial class struggle. We have to advocate together for better lives for all and to once again see the true capitalists as the dragons asleep on all of society’s gold that they are. We won’t get there by argument alone; folks have to be able to connect to such a movement for the have-nots on a deeply personal, emotional level.
We’ll have to be patient with the ongoing trend of society becoming less religious overall and count on members of the newer, more progressive generations who do embrace faith to embrace it in a way that is less Eurocentric, white-dominated, toxic masculine, and less driven by “prosperity.” We must hope that those insistent on sticking with Christianity and religion in general take on a more liberationist theology.
We’ll have to find more service-oriented approaches to participation in and discussions of the military and law enforcement. We can’t just attack those in uniform as being agents of state-based oppression and global U.S. hegemony (regardless of the truth of this historically as well in the present). We have to find ways for the soldier and officer to truly serve humanitarian needs. Examples of both military and law enforcement members serving humanitarian aims and performing truly selfless acts do abound. It must become the rule and not the exception.
Finally, we’ll have to continue working (as many of us are) to change the narrative around fossil fuels extraction and related industries in West Virginia. We’ve got to continue talking more about the costs to individuals and families, the threats to our health and to our air, water and soil, and the destabilization of our ability to safely inhabit our only home in the cosmos. At the same time, we’ve got to talk about how renewable energies, maximized energy efficiencies and sustainable agriculture and development, combined with a truly circular waste economy, save us all money, make us healthier, and help stabilize our climate.
Change is life’s only constant and I see signs of positive change in my beautiful West Virginia home. That change just hasn’t made its way to electoral politics yet. There’s a delay, a pause in receiving the feedback signal, but it’s coming. Not today or tomorrow but I’m hoping at least in my lifetime (I’m 38). The only question is how much damage will be done by the regressive, Christofascist, authoritarian forces in the meantime. I’ll keep working everyday as a climate activist and in my activism for secular and non-theist causes to limit that damage and hasten the coming of a better future.