West Virginia and the presidency

OPINION:

Countering Hillary Clinton’s widely expected victory today in West Virginia, Barack Obama achieved a major strategic victory yesterday when his superdelegate count finally overtook Mrs. Clinton’s.

At the beginning of the year, Mrs. Clinton had enjoyed an advantage of more than 100 in the battle for the allegiance of the Democratic Party’s nearly 800 superdelegates, who include members of Congress, governors and other state leaders, party officials and former officeholders, such as her husband, Bill. Unlike pledged delegates, who reflect the preferences of voters in primaries and elections and are allocated according to how presidential candidates perform in these contests, superdelegates may vote for any candidate at the party convention.

The fact that Mr. Obama now leads among superdelegates essentially confirms the increasingly prohibitive lead he enjoys among pledged delegates as the primary and caucus season approaches its end in early June. According to a tally by CNN, which yesterday reported that Maine Rep. Tom Allen’s endorsement of Mr. Obama gave the Illinois freshman senator a 274-273 superdelegate lead over Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama’s advantage in overall delegates is now 1,865 to 1,697. Excluding the delegations of Florida and Michigan, which were disqualified by the party because both states re-scheduled their primaries without approval, the delegate total required to win the Democratic nomination is 2,025. The remaining primaries and caucuses will select 217 pledged delegates, including 28 in West Virginia. About 250 superdelegates, including West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, have not yet publicly endorsed either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Jay Rockefeller, the junior senator from West Virginia, has endorsed Mr. Obama.

Notwithstanding Mr. Obama’s political coup yesterday in the battle for superdelegates, his lead among pledged delegates is certain to be narrowed today, although not in a game-changing fashion. Four polls conducted since the beginning of May show that Mrs. Clinton’s lead in West Virginia ranges from 29 points (56-27, according to a Rasmussen poll) to 43 points (66-23, according to an American Research Group poll). Interestingly, an ARG poll conducted in late March and early April reflected a Clinton lead of only 15 points. But that was before Mr. Obama told supporters at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser that residents of small town America “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.” It is fair to say that resentment for those comments has contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s widening lead in West Virginia.

But it also is worth reviewing West Virginia’s role in presidential politics.

Until 2000, Herbert Hoover in 1928 was the last non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate to win West Virginia and the election. Incumbent Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower (1956), Richard Nixon (1972), Ronald Reagan (1984) and George W. Bush (2004) won both West Virginia and re-election.

Since Democratic President Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 despite narrowly losing West Virginia, no Democratic candidate has ever been elected president without winning West Virginia. Prevailing in West Virginia, however, has not guaranteed Democratic success. In the post-World War II period, for example, West Virginia was won by Democratic candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, none of whom won the presidency in those years. Thus, winning the state has proved to be a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for Democratic presidential success. After Mr. Dukakis narrowly won the state (52-48) in 1988, Bill Clinton easily defeated President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot (48-35-16) in the state in 1992 and increased his margin of victory there four years later over Bob Dole and Mr. Perot (52-37-11).

If then-Vice President Al Gore had won West Virginia in 2000, he would have won the presidency. But he lost (52-46) — making George W. Bush the first non-incumbent Republican since Hoover to win West Virginia and the presidency.