ROMNEY, West Va. -- Bill Arnold's life-sized likeness of Barack Obama gets no respect.
Friends vandalized the cardboard cutout at a meeting in this small eastern panhandle city, plastering the face with a picture of Hillary Clinton. His mother, embarrassed to have the prop in her house, flipped it upside down so neighbors walking past her window wouldn't recognize it.
"This is Hillary country," explained Arnold, a 58-year-old retired behavior disorder teacher, as he carried the figure into the Obama campaign headquarters here where it would be sheltered from further abuse.
Obama is expected to lose the state by a wide margin, as he did in neighboring Pennsylvania and Ohio, when votes are tallied here tomorrow. But that isn't dampening the enthusiasm of supporters, emboldened by the senator's success last week.
"We are all pretty inspired. We're highly motivated," said Frankie Biega, a 28-year-old science teacher at Martinsburg High School who has knocked on doors daily for the past two weeks.
Even if the West Virginia primary goes as expected -- a recent poll shows that Clinton could win the state by more than 20 percentage points -- the results will barely affect the Democratic nominating contest, which appears nearly over.
Clinton might try to claim momentum, and discussion over Obama's lack of support among white, working-class voters could swell. But Clinton's win of a majority of the state's 28 pledged delegates wouldn't significantly cut into Obama's delegate advantage.
Obama acknowledged last week that Clinton had an "insurmountable lead" in West Virginia and neighboring Kentucky, but he has done little to secure a different result -- further evidence that the Democratic contest has moved to its next stage.
Yet West Virginia's results could magnify Obama's weaknesses.
The Illinois senator runs strongly among young voters, but the proportion of West Virginia's population older than 65 is second-highest in the nation, trailing only Florida. It's the fifth-poorest state, and 95 percent of its residents are white, the fourth-highest percentage in the country, according to the Census. White voters and lower-income voters have been among Clinton's most loyal constituencies.
There are nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans here, and the state's two U.S. senators and its governor are Democrats. But West Virginia has twice delivered its five electoral votes to George W. Bush. Gun rights and religion are major issues, providing fertile ground for Republican presidential candidates.
