West Virginia was won by Republican nominee John McCain by a 13.1% margin of victory. Prior to the election, all 17 news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or otherwise considered as a safe red state. Despite its past voting record of heavily favoring Democratic presidential nominees, the state had since 2000 been trending more Republican in presidential elections. Obama became the first Democratic presidential nominee since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to win the nationwide presidential election without carrying West Virginia, and in that election Wilson had managed to win a single electoral vote, making Obama the first Democrat to win without carrying any electoral votes from the state. Obama also became the first Democrat since 1928 to lose Logan County, a strongly unionized coal-dependent county that was the only county in West Virginia to vote for George McGovern in his landslide 1972 loss.
This is the last time that the Republican presidential nominee failed to win every county in West Virginia, & marked the first time since 1924 in which West Virginia voted for the Republican presidential candidate while neighboring Virginia voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. This is the last presidential election in which the Democratic nominee received more than 40% of the vote in West Virginia. West Virginia was one of five states where Obama underperformed Kerry, the others being Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
