The 2012 United States presidential election in West Virginia took place on November 6, 2012, as part of the 2012 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. West Virginia voters chose five electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, against Republican challenger and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan.
Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama in the state of West Virginia by a landslide 26.69-point margin. The Republican ticket took 62.14% of the vote to the Democratic ticket's 35.45%, sweeping every county in the state. Romney became the first presidential candidate from any party since West Virginia's admission to the Union in 1863 to sweep every single county in the state and the first since Richard Nixon in 1972 to carry over 60% of the state's votes.
This represented a historic loss for the Democrats in West Virginia, which had been a Democratic stronghold from the New Deal up through the 1990s. Obama became the first Democrat since statehood to win the presidency without carrying Webster County, Jefferson County, or Braxton County. Obama is the only Democrat to ever win two terms without carrying the state at least once. However, Obama did win neighboring Virginia twice, becoming the first Democrat to win Virginia twice since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944.
With 62.14% of the popular vote, West Virginia would prove to be Romney's fifth strongest state in the 2012 election after Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Idaho. As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last time the Democratic nominee has received more than 30% of the vote in West Virginia.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “2012 United States presidential election in West Virginia”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.