WOW! What cool and thoughtful dialogue we have going in here. Thanks to everybody who is arguing and discussing with respect. This is a cool thread.

This is a diary that seeks to explore the mystery of why the democratic primary electorate in the Appalachian region votes so differently than the rest of the country.

It seems that some people want to give West Virginia an outsized influence in the debate over whether or not Barack Obama has a problem securing the vote of blue collar white voters. I do not pretend to be able to dissect the psychology of these voters, and certainly do not ascribe to them any nefarious motivations such as fear of an African American candidate. But for whatever reason WVa's white voters turned out for Clinton in numbers that are different from white voters in most other parts of the country.

Yesterday, another poster had a chart up that showed the counties nationwide in which Hillary Clinton had won by margins larger than 65-35. Almost all of these counties came in Appalachia, and the only hole in the Appalachian section of the map at this point were the states of WVa and KY. Filling them in completes the cycle of Appalachian regions that Clinton can expect to win overwhelmingly. Again, why this is, I have no idea but it is so clearly regionally delineated that I feel I can say that with good confidence that Obama has a problem among Appalachian voters (and I say this as a strong Obama supporter).

At this point in this long race, Obama has won in predominantly white states on the west coast, the plains, the midwest, and the southeast. This demonstrates a breadth of support that is not shaken by the mysterious loss of support in Appalachia. It is foolish to suggest that because Obama seems to not connect with voters in Appalachia that he can't win the general, or even that he wouldn't be as strong a candidate as HRC.

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MSNBC just reported that the Obama campaign is starting to feel confident about the results tonight. Why? The Georgia white vote.

In South Carolina, the white vote made up 43% of the electorate and Barack Obama won just 24%, with Edwards and Clinton splitting the remaining 76%. In Georgia tonight, where the white vote makes up a similar 42% of the electorate, Clinton won the white vote by only 57%-39%.

If white voters continue to show support for Obama like this throughout the country, which is actually likely if they're doing so in the south, this is really bad news for Clinton. This was supposedly the reason Edwards's dropping out was good news for Clinton, that it would give her the lion's share of white voters, but they may have underestimated Obama's cross-over appeal.  

The fact that Tennessee wasn't an automatic call for Clinton is, of course, a sign that Obama's confidence may indeed be warranted.