The race between the presidential election candidates in the United States is close. George Bush’s policies in his first term mainly benefited the rich but surprisingly he is most popular in the poorest states, which were former union and Democrat strong holds.

Some of the most down-at-heel homes in the remotest villages of West Virginia sport posters for George Bush and Dick Cheney, although their occupants surely do not expect to gain from any further reductions in capital gains tax. We see a lot of “We support our troops” signs. We meet a brother and sister in the state capital, Charleston, who will vote Republican for “religious reasons”; yet the brother is a schoolteacher and he has no health insurance.

West Virginia is coal-mining country. Mines with their pithead gear are still a common sight among the hills and rivers, served by winding roads and railways. Free trade is not popular here. Nor are environmentalists, who are suspected of endangering the few remaining jobs in industry that relocations and pit closures have spared. And the issue of gun control plays into the hands of the most reactionary candidates. In early November schools close on the day that the deer-hunting season opens. Several thousand animals are slaughtered in just a few hours but, we are told: “They’re as common as pigeons round here.”

The two presidential candidates have already visited West Virginia half a dozen times since January, both are well briefed on local concerns: faith, patriotism, mining and guns. And they will be back again. On 2 November the state, which is even poorer than Louisiana or Mississippi, will vote for five out of 538 Electors who will in turn choose the next president. But given the uncertainty as to the outcome in this part of the Appalachians, West Virginia is one of a dozen states on which candidates are concentrating.

West Virginia is a stronghold of the United Mine Workers of America and has a long history of social unrest. It was here that a key figure of the labour movement, Mother Jones, organised some of the toughest conflicts between industrial workers and employers for almost 20 years at the beginning of the 20th century.

The area went on to become a bastion of (...)