West Virginia got a lot of attention in this year’s presidential election cycle. It was spotlighted regularly by the media to explain the phenomenon of the “Trump voter.” Unlike states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, Trump’s victory in West Virginia was predicted far in advance. On Election Day he took the state in a landslide, with 68 percent of the vote.

The story of West Virginia’s drift to the right in presidential elections is well known. George W. Bush’s first campaign marked a significant shift in the state’s voting patterns as it switched from reliably voting Democrat to Republican in presidential elections. This move is typically explained by pointing to West Virginia’s declining unions, opposition to climate-change regulations that would impact the state’s coal industry, and the rising appeal of social conservatism.

Less discussed is the decline of the West Virginia Democratic Party, particularly its collapse in the last two years. The Democratic Party controlled both houses of the West Virginia legislature for eighty-two years from 1932 to 2014. But in the space of two years the party has become a shadow of its former self: the Democrats went from holding 71 percent of the seats in the House of Delegates in 2008 to 54 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2014 (and maintained 37 percent in 2016). Democratic representation in the state senate fell from 71 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2014 to 35 percent in 2016.