Are Illinois and Delaware the only states where...

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A Democrat plausibly could win statewide while only carrying a single County?


I can't think of any other states where this is possible.

Hawaii, in theory. Honolulu County is much larger than the rest. Picture a neighbor island Republican who gets support there but not on Oahu.

The problem here is that Honolulu County is also by a significant amount also the County in Hawaii with the weakest Democratic leanings.

Also, even when Rauner won all but 1 of Illinois Counties, and won statewide in the process in 2014; there was still another County where he did worse than his statewide total.

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What about the inverse, is there any state where a Republican could win while winning just one county, or where this might be possible one day?

If they could pull off a narrow upset win in a Hawaii election, then Republicans would probably be winning the state with just Honolulu County.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

A Democrat plausibly could win statewide while only carrying a single County?


I can't think of any other states where this is possible.

Hawaii, in theory. Honolulu County is much larger than the rest. Picture a neighbor island Republican who gets support there but not on Oahu.

The problem here is that Honolulu County is also by a significant amount also the County in Hawaii with the weakest Democratic leanings.

Also, even when Rauner won all but 1 of Illinois Counties, and won statewide in the process in 2014; there was still another County where he did worse than his statewide total.

HI-02 actually voted to the right of the Urban Honolulu HI-01 this cycle.

Correct but HI-02 also contains a substantial rural part of Honolulu County, which is massively less Democratic than both HI-01 and the non-Honolulu Counties.

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I think a Democrat could win Washington with just King County nowadays. In 2016, only King, San Juan and Jefferson were more Democratic than the state as a whole, and San Juan and Jefferson are very small.

Edit: Missed Whatcom, but it was only very narrowly more Democratic than the state as a whole. San Juan, Jefferson and Whatcom are all also relatively similar, so the right Republican could win all three while losing King by enough to lose statewide.

If Democrats are losing Snohomish they will lose state wide as well

Snohomish was stronger for Trump and weaker for Clinton than Washington state as a whole.

Not true; it was weaker for both Clinton and Trump than the state as a whole, and it was more weaker for Trump than it was for Clinton.

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What about the inverse, is there any state where a Republican could win while winning just one county, or where this might be possible one day?

Maybe Alaska, at least hypothetically.

So the Republican would win Anchorage and lose everything else?

Anchorage is slightly to the left of the state, and there are Counties both heavily to its right and heavily to its left.

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It is mathematically possible in Arizona for a Democrat to win only carrying Maricopa County (since it has more than half of the state's population). But, currently it's the 'swing county' of the state being close to 50/50 Democrat/Republican. 

This definitely isn't going to happen anytime soon, but if rural areas continued to get more Republican and urban/suburban areas continued to get more Democratic, I could see this happening maybe 30 years from now.

Maricopa County will never get more Democratic than Pima County under such a scenario.

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About Arizona, the 2012/2016 PVI of the County is actually an extremely tiny bit to the right of the state as a whole.