The 10 counties that have ALWAYS voted Republican

[Sol]

The Democratic regions of Eastern Kentucky are not where slavery was concentrated on that map!

The Area I circled in red is roughly where there is a Democratic tradition in Eastern Kentucky. As you can see, there wasn't much slavery! There is a little bit of it Northeast Kentucky, but that clearly isn't the most salient factor considering that areas further from the river also had the same Democraticness.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What on earth is going on in this thread.

Slavery had nothing to do with anything in the eastern fifth of Kentucky; you couldn't have found a less suitable place for plantation agriculture anywhere in the South (however defined) had you tried; the whole area is part of the Cumberland Plateau. Pre-New Deal voting differences were mostly to do with ancestry; i.e. you found Democrats wherever Virginians had settled and so on. Afterwards it became a matter of class consciousness. Are we clear now?

You are a king of simplistic generalizations my friend. And that's coming from me.

Rude.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Democratic regions of Eastern Kentucky are not where slavery was concentrated on that map!

Just imagine, for one moment, someone trying to run a plantation in that area... lol

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Actually the most Democratic areas (post New Deal/UMW) were well away from the Ohio River and up on the Plateau.

[ElectionsGuy]

Conversely, the 5 4 counties that have always voted Democratic:

Washington DC
Elliot, KY
Brooks, TX
Jim Hogg, TX
Menominee, WI

[ElectionsGuy]

Hillary Clinton is white, so no.

I'll be a contrarian and say the county will actually swing towards Clinton.  52-45 in her favor.

I'd be shocked if Clinton didn't win it.

New York billionaires like Trump are a poor fit for rural Kentucky.

Obama was a horrible fit for the county and still won. Clinton will take it back to the 60% range.

Both

If a county votes for Democrats EVERY TIME, then why wouldn't it vote for a Democrat again?

Oops.

[LLR]

Did all the Republican ones keep their streaks?

[ElectionsGuy]

Did all the Republican ones keep their streaks?

Yes.

[mianfei]

superflash, there wasn't much slavery in either of these regions.

To summarize: Al mentioned that there had been a lot of labor union organizing to make that part of the state more Democratic.  At the same time, East KY was already more Democratic than Southeast KY across the Kentucky River, going back to long before the Civil War. What the Union organizers of the 1930s did was essentially return East KY back more securely to the voting patterns it had in the 19th century, before Republicans began gaining greater strength across the state in the first decades of the 20th century.

As to why the initial division between Whigs and Democrats along this geography I'm not sure, but it had very little to do with slavery.  Was the South of Kentucky along the Cumberland settled more from people from the North and other parts of the nation rather than the Jacksonian backcountry Virginia settlers in East KY?

If you read James E. Copeland’s  ‘Where Were the Kentucky Unionists and Secessionists’ (originally published in 1973 by the Kentucky Historical Society) you will see that the historically Democratic counties (Elliott, Menifee, Morgan, Wolfe, Breathitt, Floyd, Knott) had close ties with the heavily secessionist Bluegrass region located downstream.

In contrast, the fiercely Unionist counties (Clay, Leslie, Owsley, Jackson, Knox, Whitely, McCreary, Rockcastle, Laurel, Pulaski, Russell, Clinton, Cumberland, Monroe) did not have settlement ties downstream with the secessionist Bluegrass, probably because they were separated by the rugged Knobs region.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

Conversely, the 5 4 counties that have always voted Democratic:

Washington DC
Elliot, KY
Brooks, TX
Jim Hogg, TX
Menominee, WI

[libertpaulian]

Hamilton County, IN.  Went Democratic only once (in 1912).