Obama trying for West Virginia's 5 electoral votes

With previously toss-up Virginia now in blue on most Electoral College maps, Democrat Barack Obama has started advertising on television stations throughout West Virginia, a heavily rural state that "rejected his primary season appeals," The Associated Press reports. "In a sign that pocketbook concerns are trumping any prejudices, a recent AP poll showed that Obama has inched up among whites with no college education while McCain has lost ground."

The Cook Report, which rated West Virginia as solid for Republican John McCain, now says West Virginia is a toss-up. "The Cook Report was likely influenced by a survey Oct. 4-8 by American Research Group Inc., which showed Obama actually leading in West Virginia 50 percent to 42 percent for McCain, with 8 percent either undecided or voting for someone else," talk-show host Hoppy Kercheval writes in the Charleston Daily Mail.

Before "the bottom fell out of the stock market, and voter anxiety over the economy trumped all other issues," Kercheval notes, "even West Virginia Democratic Party leaders privately conceded there was no way that West Virginia, with its conservative values, would vote for Obama." He notes that many voters in the state have already seen Obama ads aimed at Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. (Read more) President Bush carried the state in 2000 and 2004.

UPDATE, Oct. 18: Ben Smith of Politico reports polling and anecdotal evidence suggests some whites with racist views will vote for Obama because of the economy. "Obama has run better than past Democrats in prosperous states with little history of tension, such as Colorado and Iowa, and worse in working-class states in the Appalachian belt," Smith writes. "His campaign has been structured around this dynamic and may actually have overestimated the number of white Democrats in the region unwilling to vote for him because of his race. . . . Obama has also ignored Southern states with a history of deep racial division, from Arkansas to Missisissippi, in favor of those that have seen an influx of new voters from the north — Virginia, North Carolina and Florida." UPDATE, Oct. 20: Obama may visit West Virginia, AP reports.