ABINGDON, Va. — While the coal issue drove higher Republican
voter turnout and percentages in Virginia coal country, it wasn’t
nearly enough to change Tuesday’s election outcome in the
state.
According to unofficial vote totals released by the Virginia
State Board of Elections after midnight, President Barack Obama had
won the state with 50 percent of the vote to challenger Mitt
Romney’s 48 percent.
Virginia, a swing state that wasn’t called until hours after
Obama’s victory was announced, had faced a constant bombardment
from both sides with ads and campaign events.
The large but largely rural region of Southwest Virginia, which
relies on coal mining as a key economic driver, had received a lot
of attention from the Romney-Ryan campaign with visits in the weeks
leading up to the election.
The strategy, supporters said, was to drive higher turnout in
areas with strong support, in hopes of bringing swing state
Virginia back to the Republican side of the election equation this
year. But it wasn’t enough.
In Virginia’s seven coalfield counties and one city, a total of
2,787 more people voted Tuesday than on Election Day in 2008.
Overall, Romney gained 10,100 votes over the 2008
Republican total — a number that could have made a big
difference if the Presidential race had been closer statewide.
Percentage-wise, Virginia’s coal region jumped from 61 percent
Republican in the 2008 Presidential election to nearly 72 percent
this year, with a similar trend reflected in some of the
surrounding Southwest Virginia counties, which are tied to it
economically.
The change was driven in part by a belief that Obama
administration restrictions on air pollution and mining have
drastically impacted the region’s economy, directly causing a
downturn in the market for coal and leading to the layoff of
thousands of workers.
By contrast, a Republican gain of less than one percentage point
in the large, urbanized Northern Virginia county of Fairfax equaled
a larger gain in terms of votes.
Based on the unofficial totals from the state board of
elections, Fairfax County reported 29,636 fewer votes for the
Republican candidate compared with 2008 and 56,409 fewer votes for
Obama, for a net benefit to the Republican side of 26,773.
Still, Obama won Fairfax County by 82,592 votes — more than the
total number of votes cast in Virginia’s coalfields.
In some ways, what happened in Virginia was similar to what
happened all over the country Tuesday. Conservative voters may have
been fired up about the perceived harm of Obama’s policies, but
their anger wasn’t enough to defeat a larger Democratic trend.
In southwest Virginia, Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith,
who unseated a revered longtime Democratic incumbent on coal issues
in 2010, won re-election Tuesday over a new Democratic opponent by
a margin of nearly two-to-one.
Griffith, who is to return to the U.S. House of Representatives
for a second term, has spent his first as a member of the
House’s vocal Republican majority.
The outcome of Virginia’s U.S. Senate race, meanwhile, helped
the Democrats to retain control of the Senate as they have the
White House. In a close race, former Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine
defeated former Republican Gov. George Allen, keeping the seat in
Democratic hands.
Really, not much changed on Tuesday: The nation, like Virginia,
remains divided along regional, demographic and ideological
lines.
While Obama’s supporters view the President’s agenda as a way
forward, others — like those in coal country who turned out in
significant numbers Tuesday to vote against him — have already
started to talk about preparing for the worst.
And while the pundits speculate on whether the election outcome
will mean continued political gridlock or a new opportunity for
compromise, the people in coal country and elsewhere remain every
bit as worried about the issue at hand: their economic future.
