Prior to the election, all 16 news organizations declared West Virginia a safe, or likely, red state.

Since West Virginia has only become a very safe Republican stronghold in recent elections, Biden is only the third Democrat ever to win the presidency without carrying the state, after Barack Obama and Woodrow Wilson.

[36] West Virginia, which was solidly Democratic territory for much of the 20th century, has consistently voted Republican in presidential elections since 2000.

Biden's losing margin of 1.24% in Monongalia marked the closest a Democrat has come to winning any county in West Virginia since 2008.

This coal-mining, union-heavy region was once among the most heavily Democratic places in the nation; Logan County, for example, broke 72% of its ballots for Bill Clinton in 1996, 61% for Al Gore in 2000, 52% for John Kerry in 2004, and even 51% for George McGovern in his only statewide county win in 1972; but by 2008, John McCain flipped it to the Republican column with 54% of the vote, which increased to 68% for Mitt Romney in 2012 and by 2016 and 2020, it had voted 79.6% and 80.9% for Trump, respectively.

[36] During the same election cycle, incumbent Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito was re-elected by a margin slightly larger than Trump's, beating out Democrat Paula Jean Swearengin by 43.3 points.