I spent a week over the Christmas holidays visiting family, over the pond in Kentucky. While I was out there, I took some time to find out about the political situation in the state, as I’m sure we all do on our holidays. Right?

Anyway, it turns out that these are interesting times for Kentucky politics. In November, the state voted in a new governor. Matt Bevin was elected as a Republican, which is a rare event in Kentucky; Republicans have only held the office for eight years since 1947.

Matt Bevin is what you might call a “wild card”, with no experience of working in politics. He has alienated many other Kentucky Republicans, getting into public spats with such high-profile figures as Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul; the GOP even stopped airing campaign adverts on his behalf. Fortunately for him, Bevin is a wealthy businessman, who was able to plough $2.5m of his own money into the contest. His defeated opponent, Jack Conway, served as attorney general of Kentucky for eight years, and has worked in state politics for two decades.

So a rich inexperienced maverick outsider manages to defeat a political veteran. We can only hope this story isn’t repeated nationwide this year.

But there may be a broader problem here for left-liberal politics. It is not a new problem, but it still lies unanswered. In Kentucky, the Democratic electoral coalition has splintered, as working-class voters have drifted away. This is the same pattern we have seen with Labour since 1997. Why?

Middle class liberals look at Bevin’s election with horror and confusion. The new governor has pledged to stop new people enrolling in Medicaid, to limit the power of trade unions, and to prevent the minimum wage rising. How, liberals ask themselves, could working-class voters not support the Democrats? Perhaps the answer lies in coal.

Matt Bevin

Coal is historically a big industry in Kentucky, and the foundation of the economy, particularly in the poorer counties in the east; the state is one of the biggest suppliers of coal to the rest of the United States. However, in recent years, employment in the industry has fallen significantly; by 62% over the last thirty-two years in eastern Kentucky, which contains some of the poorest counties in the entire country. Why the collapse? Firstly, increased mechanisation has meant fewer workers are required. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, there have been efforts by governments to move away from coal, due to its environmental impacts.

There is no doubt that coal can be environmentally devastating, and various environmental regulations have attempted to shift the country to less damaging sources of fuel. Worse, there is an increasing use of mountaintop removal mining, which is a more efficient way of obtaining coal, but is widely understood to have deleterious effects on human health, as well as destroying the landscape.

Middle class liberals argue, quite reasonably, that environmental destruction must be prevented. And indeed, Barack Obama tried to pass an emissions trading bill in the first year of his presidency, only to see the legislation die in the Senate.

However, Jack Conway’s (qualified) support for a cap and trade bill became a millstone around his neck. The Democratic candidate for governor found himself painted as too close to a president who wishes to crush the coal industry, and was attacked relentlessly on the issue during the recent campaign. Supporting cap and trade, backing President Obama, and taking donations from the anti-coal Sierra Club proved toxic to Conway.

You may well be nodding here, thinking that you support Jack Conway’s ideas, that environmental destruction is obviously bad, that coal should be left in the ground, that you would have voted Democrat. Well, sure. I would have as well. But the point here is to answer why working-class people either voted Republican, or simply didn’t bother voting at all, in what was expected to be a very close election.

Coalmine in Kentucky

Although the coal issue can be framed as an economic issue, Matt Bevin has often communicated it as a cultural one, speaking of the war Barack Obama is waging on Kentucky. Here again is a story being told of a liberal elite; a group of rich men who don’t understand the lives of ordinary working people, and are hell-bent on taking away their livelihoods. This charge is somewhat harder to rebut when it is in part true. Does Jack Conway really understand the realities of life in eastern Kentucky, in an area where the poverty rate is 25%, where in some towns over half the population claim food stamps? Of course, it’s likely Matt Bevin doesn’t understand either, but he had a different card to play.