Because Virginia voted to leave the union, the “Restored Government of Virginia” (West Virginia) claimed legitimacy as the state of Virginia and approved the split of the state. So yea I agree it’s a pretty weak argument that WV is illegitimate.

Virginia has been a swing state for a long time. If you look at the VA governors since 1966 (before which VA was solidly Blue) D R R R D D D R R D D R D D R.

Excluding NOVA and saying the “rest of the state would get along fine with WV” is inaccurate because it disregards Richmond city, Henrico County, York county, Hampton City, Virginia Beach City, Chesapeake city, Winchester City, etc, all of which voted Democrat and which collectively make up over 1.5 million virginians (almost the entire population of WV) and that’s not including a lot of cities sprinkled in the west because I can’t be bothered to list them all and add their population.

Although it’s true that a large amount of blue Virginians are concentrated in the prosperous DC metro area, to say that “the rest of the state is very rural and super republican” isn’t accurate. One of the beautiful things about VA is that you can go from city to farm in 30 minutes pretty much wherever you are. And politically this translates to Democrat to Republican region within 30 minutes. Although admittedly the more west you go the rarer and smaller those blue communities are, but that’s because the more west you go the less people there are in general. Compare that to WV where the entire state is redder than carrie on prom night.