The 2016 West Virginia Democratic presidential primary was held on May 10 in the U.S. state of

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

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: Kiri ...

. The Republican Party 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

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, working-class state where voters were angry about the Obama administration's policies, Bernie Sanders easily outpolled Clinton. Thirty percent of Democratic primary voters came from a

coal 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 when ...

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 when de ...

; 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

Democratic primary This is a list of Democratic Party presidential primaries. 1912 This was the first time that candidates were chosen through primaries. New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson ran to become the nominee, and faced the opposition of Speaker of the Uni ...

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...

May 2016 events in the United States