But that middle ground had caved in, and blue-collar West Virginia—staunchly Democratic in the twentieth century—had turned strongly Republican in recent elections. Klempa blamed some of this rightward turn on race. The state was 95 percent white, and even the waning Democratic base was so unenthusiastic about Obama that it had given 41 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential primary to a jailed felon, Keith Judd.
