WEST VIRGINIA
Located within the heart of Appalachia, West Virginia is a state unlike any other. For starters, it’s one of only two states to form after separating from another state; West Virginia became the 35th state in 1863, after separating from Virginia over the commonwealth’s secession from the Union two years earlier. West Virginia also has the lowest percentage foreign-born population of any state, with just 1.6% of residents being born outside the U.S. Additionally, according to the 2020 Census, a staggering 90% of West Virginians are white, the third-highest percentage in the nation. Finally, the state has the second-highest percentage of residents 65 and older, at 16%.
These demographics explain why West Virginia is also the most conservative state in the nation outside the Mountain West. In 2020, residents overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, helping the former president beat Joe Biden by 38.9 points in the state (68.6% to 29.7%); this margin of victory was the second highest of any state in the 2020 election (Wyoming’s being the highest).
So, will West Virginians support Donald Trump in great enough numbers this November to make the Mountain State the most Republican in the nation? West Virginia has gained attention in recent years for its incumbent senator, and former governor, Democrat Joe Manchin. The conservative force in his caucus, Manchin has been a key swing vote in the Senate when it was split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans after the 2020 elections. Last year, Manchin announced that he won’t seek reelection in 2024, a move which will almost certainly flip his seat to the GOP.
In the 2022 midterms, Republicans in West Virginia performed slightly worse than two years prior, winning 66.1% of House election votes compared to 67.6% in 2020. It should be noted, however, that Democrats also did slightly worse, performing 0.7 points lower in 2022 than in 2020. Regardless, these results show extremely strong support for Republicans in the state and indicate that Trump’s numbers this fall should be similar.
We predict that Donald Trump will win West Virginia, performing slightly better than during his 2020 run. Kamala Harris will struggle to appeal to the state’s overwhelmingly white, working-class voter base and, as a result, can expect to achieve lower numbers than Joe Biden did four years ago.
OKLAHOMA
Existing for 73 years as Indian Territory before finally entering the Union in 1907 as the 46th state, Oklahoma certainly has a unique history. Throughout the 1830s, American Indians living in the Southeastern United States were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and forced to migrate to the newly created Indian Territory in what was later called The Trail of Tears. And while this territory remained closed to outside settlers for over half a century, in 1889 its unassigned lands were opened to the public, allowing individuals to claim up to 160 acres if they lived on the land and improved it.
This history gives Oklahoma its demographics today, where 8.4% of the population is Native, the highest percentage in the nation besides Alaska, and 63.5% of the population is White. Oklahoma is also one of the reddest states in the nation. The Sooner State has voted for a Democrat Presidential candidate only once in the last 72 years, LBJ in the election of 1964. In fact, in the 2020 Presidential election only two states had all of their counties go for Trump: West Virginia, and, of course, Oklahoma.
Trump won the state with 65.4% of the vote to Biden’s 32.3%, a margin of 33.1 points. But this victory shouldn’t be at all surprising; every Republican Presidential candidate since 2004 has won Oklahoma with over 65% of the vote; the all-time high for a Republican being Richard Nixon’s 71.8% in the blowout election of 1972.
Despite this, in recent years Republicans have failed to grow their support in the state. In the 2014 midterms, the GOP won a remarkable 70% of the votes in the state’s five House elections, but in three of the four elections since then, their share of the vote has decreased, most recently coming in at 66.36% in 2022. Additionally, in Oklahoma’s 2022 Senate race, Republican incumbent James Lankford defeated Democrat challenger Madison Horn with 64.3% of the vote, over three points less than his previous run in 2016. And while these performances are still significant victories for Republicans, they do show that the party has stagnated in the state.
Finally, while Donald Trump increased his share of the vote by 0.05% from 2016 to 2020, his margin of victory in the state shrunk considerably; Trump won the state by 36.4 points in 2016, but by just 33.1 points four years later. With this in mind, we predict that Donald Trump will win Oklahoma by a similar margin to his 2020 run. You can expect Trump’s margin of victory to fall within the 33 to 36-point range, making it unlikely that he’ll net any massive gains in the state, but making it equally unlikely that Democrat Kamala Harris will make any improvements over her predecessor.
KENTUCKY
Kentucky, the northernmost state of the Bible Belt, has been a solid Republican state in every presidential election since 2000. While its neighbors to the north, Indiana and Ohio, voted for Obama in 2008, the Bluegrass State still gave over 57% of its votes to Republican John McCain. This makes sense, as Kentucky has the third-highest percentage evangelical Protestant population in the nation, at 49%, and Republicans overwhelmingly win this group. In 2020, Donald Trump won 76% of all evangelical voters, which was a decrease from the 80% of the group he won back in 2016.
This 4% decline in performance with evangelicals was a large factor in Trump’s overall worse performance in Kentucky compared to four years prior. Trump finished 30 points above Clinton in 2016 but just 26 points above Biden in 2020, although his percentage of the vote decreased by only 0.4 points (from 62.5% to 62.1%).
So, will Donald Trump be able to win members of this key group of voters back? While Trump stands to benefit from the unpopularity of the Biden administration (Biden’s approval rating with Kentuckians is below 40%), a stronger performance by the former president is not assured; the issue of abortion threatens to hurt Trump and help Kamala Harris. Abortion was made illegal in Kentucky via a trigger law immediately after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, with no exception for rape or incest. Voters in the state, however, rejected a 2022 referendum that would’ve amended Kentucky’s constitution to deny any protections on abortion. Although the referendum failed narrowly, 48% to 52%, it signals that voters in Kentucky are extremely divided on abortion.
Furthermore, with women in the state leaning slightly more to the left than the right (46% to 44%), Trump will likely have trouble winning even close to half of women voters due to this issue. We predict that Donald Trump will win Kentucky by a slightly smaller margin this November than in 2020, due to backlash from women on the state’s abortion restrictions. Trump’s better performance with evangelical men is likely to be offset by his weaker performance with all women in the state. As a result, Harris will likely perform better in Kentucky than her predecessor did four years ago.
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