The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is winding down. New York businessman Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee, but the Democratic contest is still going strong, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders winning Nebraska and West Virginia Tuesday night despite the party’s acceptance of Hillary Clinton as its nominee.
Trump won West Virginia by a wide margin, which was predicted since all of his opponents have dropped out. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz still won 11 percent of men and 9 percent of women, but Trump won 78 percent of men and 75 percent of women.
Republican voters were fairly evenly split between the sexes, with 51 percent of primary voters being men and 49 percent being women.
The Democratic nomination is much more interesting, and vote totals from the Mountain State show that Clinton doesn’t have a lock on the women’s vote.
Democratic primary voters were 47 percent men and 53 percent women, a closer gap than in many recent primaries. Both sexes preferred Sanders, with 53 percent of men and 50 percent of women choosing the Vermont senator over Clinton. While barely over 50 percent of the vote doesn’t seem like much, just 35 percent of men and 38 percent of women voted for Clinton, making the gap between her and Sanders much wider.
Much of Clinton’s demise in the state is being attributed to her recent statement that if elected president she would put coal workers in the unemployment line. When asked at a campaign event about why poor white people should vote for her, Clinton said she wanted to move toward renewable energy sources and that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
That snippet was replayed again and again over the last couple of weeks and made Clinton look hostile toward many in the state. The rest of Clinton’s answer — in which she said she wanted to find new jobs for those displaced coal workers in the clean energy sector — typically wasn’t usually included in those snippets. This made it seem as if Clinton wanted to put many West Virginia voters and their loved ones out of work.
Coal accounts for more than 30,000 jobs in West Virginia and provides more than $3.5 billion to the state’s gross domestic product annually. That’s something both sexes care about.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
