The Roanoke (Virginia) Times asks this week, "Does Obama have Appalachian appeal?" The paper puts together a package of material, including a map of past presidential election results by county. There are also some short videos on people, issues and politics. The paper visits several communities in the mountainous southwest corner of the state, where Sen. Barack Obama lost badly to Hillary Clinton. (See Trammel, Virginia, above.)

"Appalachia, ideologically, is at war with itself," said Stephen Mooney, who teaches at the Appalachian Studies Program at nearby Virginia Tech. "Broad-based assumptions give way to a very complex reality: Co-existing simultaneously you have a deep-set conservatism and a deep-set liberalism. Co-existing simultaneously you have a region that has rebelled against American political and economic ideologies and a region that has probably the most deeply felt sense of patriotism than any other place in the nation."