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Overcoming One‐Party Dominance: How Contextual Politics and West Virginia Helped Put George Bush in the White House
Author(s) -
Grossback Lawrence,
Hammock Allan
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2003.tb00155.x
Subject(s) - george (robot) , dominance (genetics) , white (mutation) , politics , house of representatives , west virginia , political science , public administration , law , history , archaeology , art history , biology , biochemistry , gene
In West Virginia it is often said that coal is king. If so, the Democratic Party and organized labor serve as its princess. West Virginia had voted Republican in presidential contests on only three occasions since 1932. If there ever was a one‐party state, West Virginia was it. Yet in 2000, Republican George Bush won the state, thus securing five electoral votes—one more than his eventual margin of victory. This article looks at how this victory came about in light of scholarly questions about how national campaigns select issues on which to campaign in targeted states and how a dominant party can be overcome through such efforts. We propose an answer to these questions that is rooted in the contextual theory of electoral politics and test this theory against qualitative data taken from local and national media and quantitative data in the form of county level election returns.