CHESTER, West Virginia — Heading into the 2016 presidential election, Hancock County, which is located along the curves of the Ohio River, had over 12,700 Democrats and 7,150 Republicans registered to vote. Since then, Democrats have lost 2,000 of their voters either to Republican or independent affiliation.
It is a trend in the Mountain State that isn’t just limited to this town, sandwiched in the panhandle between Ohio and Pennsylvania; all across the state, voters are leaving their ancestral party. And some others are just moving away.
According to numbers posted by the West Virginia secretary of state’s office, the Democratic Party has lost 83,119 voters since the 2016 presidential election, while Republican registrations increased by 13,325. This has considerably narrowed the gap in registration in a once heavily Democratic state. Democrats now have 488,148 voters and the Republicans 411,872.
No one would argue seriously that West Virginia, where Trump got more than two-thirds of the vote, would ever be in play for the Democrats in 2020. But the story of its sentiments and the evolution of these voters aren’t just limited to within the state’s boundaries. In many ways, especially in their connection to place and their distrust of large government, political, and entertainment institutions, these voters are very similar to voters in rural, suburban, and exurban voters in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
In short, West Virginians are giving hints, to anyone willing to explore them deeply, that what happens in West Virginia doesn’t necessarily stay here; they may be telling reporters, pollsters, and experts what to look for in voter sentiments in those Great Lakes states that hold the keys to electoral victory for 2020.
Tom Maraffa, geography professor emeritus at Youngstown State University, explained that the similarities of the voters in slow-growth metropolitan regions are striking and important to consider when trying to understand trends. He said West Virginians “share that sense of rootedness” with voters “in places like suburban Youngstown, Akron, or Ashtabula, Ohio, or suburban Erie, Pennsylvania, or Macomb County, Michigan, or Kenosha, Wisconsin.“
“Those slow-growth regions and metropolitan area suburbs are populated largely by people who have relocated within the same metropolitan area,” he said. “They move to suburbs for better housing and school systems, but they maintain connections to the places they moved from.”
In many cases, across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, just like in West Virginia, the parents of these younger families still live in the central cities, in the old neighborhood. They support the high school that they graduated from, even though they may live in another school district. They support the church they grew up in, even though they may attend another church in the suburbs. They remain members of the ethnic social club. In other words, Maraffa said, “The values of the central city communities have been transferred to the suburbs in these metropolitan areas.”
It is a shared way of life, living, and connection.
In fast-growth metropolitan areas where there is an influx of suburban voters, it can be significant enough to shift the politics of the state as a whole. “For example, the growth of northern Virginia suburbs seems to be sufficient to shift Virginia,” said Maraffa.
What reporters and pollsters and outsiders tend to miss in slow-growth regions is that the suburban vote requires changing the hearts and minds of voters who have been in place their entire lives. That is not easily accomplished. Their votes can also shift the results in a state.
While an abundance of stories have been written about the “blue-ing” of Texas and Georgia suburbs and what that might mean for other former Republican strongholds similar to those suburbs, it is equally important to consider what the reddening of West Virginia means to other former Democratic strongholds where voters are more similar than perhaps political experts considered.
