To elaborate:
• The Restored and Redeemer Parties (named for the pre-statehood administration and the post-Reconstruction "Redeemers") inherit Unionist and secessionist legacies and geographies respectively, intended as a riff on the Irish party system. Assume that ideologies, insofar as they exist here, are roughly analogous. The Redeemers implemented a New Deal analogue in around the time of OTL, but it devolved into classic party-of-power clientelism hijinks thus encouraging their rivals to go all Good Government / On the Waterfront Thought. Restored gains here are mostly #trendz, though delayed and muted compared to OTL by the lack of American nationalization in an independent state and greater strength of the party apparatus on the ground and in socioeconomic institutions. This election being very loosely modeled on UK 2019, the Redeemer gain of Nitro in the Charleston metro amidst a demoralized national shellacking is our Putney.
• Shortly before this election, Restored MP Jim Justice splits to form his own party on a sort of Andrej Babiš Thought wavelength (named Greenbrier 'cause he owns the state's infamous Greenbrier resort). Greenbrier gains are concentrated in areas where he overperformed as a Democrat in 2016 and/or weird microcosmic #trendz against the historical allegiances seen between there and Manchin 2018, like historically Unionist and safely Republican Parkersburg becoming competitive.
• As the name may suggest, the Blizzard Party claims the legacy of Bill Blizzard and other Coal War firebrands, though it has little direct connection to those organizations (those unions that weren't ruthlessly cracked down on after this TL's Blair Mountain blossomed into a putsch became all but arms of the Redeemer machine and continue to be such in the era of managed decline). Thus it is the Sinn Féin of our Irish metaphor. This early election was triggered by the Blizzard Party voting down a proposed austerity budget by the Redeemer minority government. Their seats are concentrated in areas where non-Manchin federal Democrats still can get 40% in our world, thus despite their claims to Worker's Party-dom their partisans are students (West Virginia University, Marshall University, and Shepherd University are all located in Blizzard-held seats) urban progressives, and increasingly the nation's small Black population. Maybe some retired coal workers who were involved in mid-century radicalism are in their camp as well, though they have no real base in that part of the world and in this election cynically struck deals not to run against left-leaning Redeemer MPs like Richard Ojeda of Logan.
• Alex Mooney and Don Blankenship are independents because they are deranged. Mooney was sacked from the Restored caucus for campaign finance violations but cynically used the incident to privot to a "maverick" image and maintained enough earmark clout to stay in place; Blankenship ran as an independent in a seat that historically wouldn't touch Restored candidates with a fifty-foot pole (being the site of the Matewan massacre) but fell victim to cultural #trendz and predatory prescription painkiller marketing, accusing Opposition Leader Blair of being a "Manchurian Candidate" addicted to cocaine while running to the right of his party on hot-button social issues.
• Humoring OTL for a minute, only eight of these 100 seats nominally voted for Biden.
