The 2016 West Virginia Democratic presidential primary was held on May 10 in the U.S. state of West Virginia as one of the Democratic Party's primaries ahead of the

2016 presidential election This national electoral calendar for 2016 lists the national/federal elections held in 2016 in all sovereign states and their dependent territories. By-elections are excluded, though national referendums are included. January *7 January: Kirib ...

. The

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held primaries in two states, including their own West Virginia primary, while for the Democratic Party this was the only primary on that day. In a heavily white,

working-class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

state where voters were angry about the

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

's policies, Bernie Sanders easily outpolled Clinton. Thirty percent of Democratic primary voters came from a coal household, and Sanders won 63 percent of these.

Opinion polling

Results

Analysis

Although West Virginia had breathed new life into Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign eight years earlier, it failed to deliver for Clinton's front-running campaign in 2016. Clinton lost every county in the state to Bernie Sanders. Sanders's West Virginia victory came from strong support among workers in the

coal industry Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed whe ...

; fifty-five percent of West Virginia's Democratic voters with coal workers in their households voted for Sanders, while only 29 percent voted for Clinton. His easy win was likely fueled by Clinton's comments in March about coal, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." Analysts speculated Sanders's win in West Virginia came not from support for his own coal policies, but from a rejection of the Obama administration's. Sanders was also helped by large numbers of Republican cross-over voters. Thirty-nine percent of Sanders voters stated they planned to vote for Donald Trump over Sanders in the November general election.

References

{{2016 Democratic primaries West Virginia Democratic primary

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May 2016 events in the United States