There've been a number of good diaries recently dealing with the future prospects for Democratic wins in the South - especially
this one - which have motivated me to write this diary.
Over the past couple days, I've been doing some research into recent voting patterns in eastern Kentucky and there are some interesting trends worth noting, and there's some ostensible good and bad news for the party. Here's a map I put together of how the region voted in the last two Presidential elections:
First, it should be noted that the big red cluster of counties in the bottom left is a long-time Republican stronghold, so I haven't looked much at them.
The bad news is that Kerry lost three counties - Harlan, Letcher, & Perry - that are traditional Democratic strongholds and were won by Gore. Kerry also lost ground in Breathitt and Pike, two other strongholds. Given its violent history with some of the most deadly
examples of corporate greed in our nation's history, and the epic union struggles that took place there, Harlan going red is especially painful in my mind (not to mention Perry:
Mongiardo's home county, in which he cleaned up).
Given what we've seen overall this cycle, conventional wisdom would say that these voting shifts are easily attributable to the growing influence of evangelical Christianity and the "natural realignment" taking place across the south. And to that effect, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about the whole thing until I decided to look back over more of the 2000 results, where I realized that Bush lost four counties that he'd won 4 years ago - all of which seem to go opposite the realignment trend.
It struck me as quite significant that a Massachusetts Liberal (the "most liberal" Senator in Congress no less) was able to pick up four counties - Bath, Carter, Menifee, & Rowan - that were lost by Gore, a Southern Moderate from the neighboring state.
These counties all sit outside the area in which I work, so I really don't know much about them other than the fact that they're quite rural and all sit on the outskirts of the central Appalachian coal-belt (which means their history is probably heavily tied to it).
I thought maybe these were just traditionally Democratic counties returning to the norm after flirting with Bush, so I decided to dig a little deeper to make sure something perfectly explainable wasn't lying behind these wins. When I put together the voting trends dating back to the 1980 election, however, it looks to me like that doesn't hold much water.
While it could easily be argued that both Bath and Menifee show strong tendencies to vote for the Democratic nominee over the past 25 years, the same cannot be said for Carter and Rowan. Not surprisingly, all four voted strongly for Clinton both election cycles, but otherwise Carter and Rowan look to me like consistent swing counties, if not slightly Republican ones, which in my mind would indicate that all things being equal, Bush should have won them again. And even if they were just traditionally Democratic southern counties that went from Bush in `00 to Kerry in '04, that's still notable.
Over-all, these counties followed the nationwide trend of higher-than-normal turnout, and everywhere except Bath, Bush actually gained votes over his 2000 showing - as was seen nationwide. I think that fact makes Kerry's wins all the more impressive, and leads me to believe that there's likely a valuable lesson to be learned here.
Furthermore, with the exception of Clinton's Menifee showing in '92, Kerry received the largest number of votes for a candidate in any of these counties going back at least as far as 1980. Not bad, considering they've been losing population rather than gaining it.
Also, Nader was on the ballot both elections, and voters switching from him and other third party candidates are too insignificant to explain the change. Nader lost only 20-40 votes on average over 2000 this time around.
While all four counties did use electronic voting systems , I find it hard to believe that Kerry's increase was due to some savvy rural hacking job in lowly-populated counties, so I believe something else was going on. Considering Kentucky got very little attention by either campaign, there must be a regional explanation for four neighboring counties to all vote Kerry after going for Bush.
Did certain issues resonate with the area's voters more than usual? Were these traditional Dems motivated to vote again for the first time in years, or were many of them new voters? Was there an outstanding registration and/or GOTV effort by the county Dems, or is it something I'm not even thinking of? Whatever the answer is, I think it's worth a closer look by the state party, if not the national one. If we're going to rebuild southern strength, we've got to learn what gets the voters out for our side, and we have to rebuild national credit in WV and southeastern KY (I'm planning on forwarding this on to members of the state party who'll hopefully get their way with a more responsive DNC chair).
As the diary I linked to above points out, there are many reasons not to abandon the south for the Democrats. If we employ the right strategies, we'll get some important wins. Those wins will come all the more easily if we can find out why people in counties like these 4 shifted strongly to a candidate who looks bad for the south on paper, and bombed elsewhere.
I'd greatly appreciate any input that's out there, especially from those who might know more about these counties.