The Electoral Map

Hillary Clinton dropped an interesting stat today. Per Memoli, she told a Clear Fork, W.V. crowd, “Democrats don’t get elected president unless West Virginia votes for you. And everybody knows West Virginia has picked presidents pretty accurately over the last years.” She went on to give John F. Kennedy as an example as a Democratic who “had West Virginia behind him.”

But here’s another stat: When JFK ran for president, the Mountain State had eight Electoral College votes. Today it has only five. And he’s an even more stark stat: Lyndon B. Johnson won 538,087 raw votes in West Virginia in 1964 but John Kerry took only 326,541 votes there in 2004. So, obviously the state and its impact has decreased.

Not to be outdone, Bill Clinton also dropped his own outlandish stat on Monday. Rallying a crowd in Logan, he said: “You think this crowd’s noisy. Just wait til we win like 80-20,” quickly added, “We’ve got to give her a vote tomorrow of 80-20 or 90-10.”