'Bush must-win counties', 2000

These are all the counties that cast over 100,000 votes in either 1992 or 1996 (1992 being a higher-turnout election), and that either voted Republican in every election from 1968 through 1988, or voted for Bush Sr in 1992 (if both, the latter is listed, as a stronger indication of loyal Republicanism). 

Unless otherwise noted, the number of votes cast is in 1996. The last time a Republican won the state without carrying the county is also listed in bold. States that voted for Bob Dole in 1996 (and therefore wouldn't under any circumstances have been considered 'swing states' in 2000) are italicised.

Arizona
Pima County (Republican 1968-1988) (264,552) (Gore) (1992)

California
San Bernardino County (Republican 1968-1988) (413,355) (Bush) (1868)
Ventura County (Republican 1968-1988) (251,194) (Bush) (1960)
Santa Barbara County (Republican 1968-1988) (150,745) (Gore) (1860)
San Joaquin County (Republican 1968-1988) (145,140) (Bush) (1896)
Monterey County (Republican 1968-1988) (108,558) (Gore) (1896)

Connecticut
Fairfield County (Bush Sr '92) (352,227) (Gore) (1880)

Florida
Palm Beach County (Republican 1948-1988) (397,354) (Gore) (1992)
Pinellas County (Republican 1968-1988) (376,272) (Gore) (1992)
Hillsborough County (Bush Sr '92) (308,271) (Bush) (1960)

Illinois
Lake County (Bush Sr '92) (203,702) (Bush) (never)
Will County (Republican 1968-1988) (147,689) (Bush) (never)
Winnebago County (Republican 1968-1988) (99,250) (112,215 in 1992) (Bush) (never)

Kentucky
Jefferson County (Republican 1968-1988) (279,913) (Gore) (never)

Louisiana
East Baton Rouge Parish (Bush Sr '92) (170,647) (Bush) (never)
Caddo Parish (Republican 1952-1964, Wallace 1968, Republican 1972-1988) (99,379) (102,678 in 1992) (Gore) (never)

Maryland
Baltimore County (Republican 1968-1988) (269,968) (Gore) (1924)
(Howard County cast 95,508 votes in 1996 and 99,798 votes in 1992, and was Maryland's sixth-most-vote-casting county in both 1996 and 2000--realistically, it would have been a must-win for Bush in this state as well, and it voted for Gore. [Bush Sr's margin in the state of Maryland in 1988 came entirely from Baltimore and Howard Counties.] A Republican had last won Maryland without Howard County in 1924.)

Massachusetts
Barnstable County (Republican 1968-1988) (110,737) (Gore) (never)

Michigan
Oakland County (Bush Sr. '92) (505,642) (Gore) (1892)
Macomb County (Bush Sr. '92) (306,028) (Gore) (1956)
Ingham County (Republican 1968-1988) (116,815) (Gore) (1896)
Kalamazoo County (Republican 1968-1988) (93,135) (103,858 in 1992) (Gore) (1916)

Missouri
St Louis County (Republican 1968-1988) (462,278) (Gore) (never)

New Hampshire
Hillsborough County (Bush Sr. '92) (146,635) (Bush) (1968)
Rockingham County (Bush Sr. '92) (113,248) (Bush) (1888)

New Jersey
Bergen County (Bush Sr. '92) (362,887) (Gore) (1872)
Monmouth County (Bush Sr. '92) (248,961) (Gore) (1872)
Ocean County (Bush Sr. '92) (202,976) (Bush) (never)
Union County (Republican 1968-1988) (190,241) (Gore) (never)
Passaic County (Bush Sr. '92) (152,951) (Gore) (1948)

New Mexico
Bernalillo County (Republican 1968-1988) (182,543) (Gore) (never)

New York
Nassau County (Republican 1968-1988) (544,664) (Gore) (never [first voted in 1900])
Suffolk County (Bush Sr. '92) (505,213) (Gore) (never)
Westchester County (Republican 1968-1988) (344,863) (Gore) (1888)
Onondaga County (Republican 1968-1988) (194,939) (Gore) (never)
Staten Island (Bush Sr. '92) (128,007) (Gore) (1928)
Orange County (Bush Sr. '92) (114,538) (Bush) (1860)
Rockland County (Republican 1968-1988) (112,241) (Gore) (1888)
Dutchess County (Bush Sr. '92) (103,821) (Bush) (1872)
Oneida County (Bush Sr. '92) (94,929) (108,342 in 1992) (Bush) (1948)

North Carolina
Mecklenburg County (Bush Sr. '92) (212,845) (Bush) (1996)

Ohio
Franklin County (Bush Sr. '92) (400,515) (Gore) (1892)
Stark County (Republican 1968-1988) (158,346) (Bush) (1944)
Lake County (Bush Sr. '92) (97,736) (105,990 in 1992) (Bush) (1960)

Oregon
Washington County (Republican 1968-1988) (159,755) (Gore) (never)
Clackamas County (Republican 1968-1988) (145,146) (Bush) (never)
Marion County (Bush Sr. '92) (107,463) (Bush) (never)

Pennsylvania
Montgomery County (Republican 1968-1988) (293,961) (Gore) (1892)
Delaware County (Republican 1968-1988) (234,748) (Gore) (never)
Bucks County (Republican 1968-1988) (227,363) (Gore) (1892)
Lehigh County (Republican 1968-1988) (106,110) (Gore) (1932)

Washington
Spokane County (Republican 1968-1988) (159,232) (Bush) (never)

Wisconsin
Brown County (Bush Sr. '92) (90,837) (102,701 in 1992) (Bush) (1960)

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In 2012, analysts focussed on a group of large, historically Republican counties in swing states, which all had in common that they had voted for George W. Bush twice and against Bill Clinton at least once, had cast over 100,000 votes in 2008, and had switched to Obama in 2008. These were characterised as counties Romney had to win in order to win the 2012 election. Romney failed to win most of them, and in 2016, analysts continued to focus on them, confident that if the Democrats retained them, that would pose an insurmountable problem for the Republicans--or shocked that this was apparently not happening.

For example, in 2012, John King said of Hamilton County, Ohio, that 'If the Democrats win it, the state is gone.' Early on the night in 2016, Jonathan Karl said,

If you're looking at Florida, if you wanna look at one place on this entire map, look at Hillsborough County. That's in Tampa. No Republican has carried Florida without carrying Hillsborough County since Calvin Coolidge.

Later on, as the election began to take shape, Brit Hume said,

There are a couple of counties...Loudoun County, Virginia, being one, Hillsborough County in Florida being another, they've been bellwether counties. So far, tonight, in Loudoun County, as far as we know, Hillary Clinton is doing very well indeed, but the race in the state of Virginia is still way too close to call, correct?...And in Hillsborough County, Florida, the early results we had were that she was doing great there, and yet she's trailing in the state. So what may happen in this election is it may be that some of these counties that have been great bellwethers in the past because of their makeup may turn out not to be this time. We may have a whole new set of bellwether counties.

And Chuck Todd,

She [Hillary Clinton] did her job in Hillsborough [County, FL]...But this is not enough. She's gonna win Hillsborough and lose the state.

On the eve of the 2000 election, there was a large grouping of counties that could have been described similarly. They had cast over 100,000 votes in either 1992 and/or 1996, and had either voted to re-elect George H. W. Bush in 1992 (a clear sign of being distinctly more Republican than the nation, at least as of that election), or had voted Republican in the six straight elections of 1968-1988 (including for Ford in his narrow loss in 1976). The latter is perhaps less impressive, as it doesn't involve voting for any really badly losing Republicans. However, it was the criterion the CQ Almanac used in 1996 to define a Clinton 1992 'beachhead': 'In [1992], he won 41 counties (with at least 100,000 registered voters) that no Democratic presidential candidate had won since at least 1964.' (And most of those counties had a deeper Republican history predating the 1964 Johnson landslide.)

Now, not every county that cast over 100,000 votes and that had voted against Bill Clinton at least once, for Bush twice, and for Obama in '08 (and was in a swing state), was accounted a 'Romney must-win county'. And probably not every 'Clinton beachhead' from either '92 or '96 would have been accounted a Republican must-win county in 2000. One thing that characterised most of the 'Romney must-win counties' was that they were not only population centres, but were more particularly affluent, suburban, and well-educated. As discussed here, this may be why Brown County, Wisconsin was not generally included amongst the 'Romney must-win counties' (despite that it fit all the other characteristics of the 'Romney must-win counties', including having been the largest county in its state to have switched to Obama in 2008 and having given him a sizeable [9.1%] margin). 

Likewise, not all the above counties would have been considered 'Bush must-win counties' in 2000. Some counties that it is relatively safe to say would have been considered Bush must-win counties are Oakland, MI and Montgomery and Delaware, PA, because there are actually signs here and there of their having been considered 'Bush must-win counties'. For example, on Nov. 3, 2000, Gordon Trowbridge wrote, 

Republicans hope higher turnout in Oakland GOP country will reverse results of four years ago, when President Clinton was the second Democrat since 1960 to carry the county. National political pundits say Oakland is among a handful of U.S. counties that will be critical in predicting the presidential outcome.

Similarly, with regard to Pennsylvania, a number of analysts cited Montgomery and Delaware Counties (and sometimes Bucks) as critical counties in 1996 and 2000 (and even later). In a postmortem analysis of the 1996 election, Cook Rhodes wrote that 

[T]o have a chance at victory, Dole needed to sweep the affluent, Republican-oriented suburbs of Philadelphia. He didn’t.

In 1992, Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than a quarter-century to carry three of the suburban counties — Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery. And he won each of the three by a larger margin this year.

And on election night 2000, Hal Bruno alluded to Gore's surprising strength in the Philadelphia suburbs briefly after Pennsylvania was called: 'There was a big surprise, Judy; he not only won the city of Philadelphia but he did very well in the suburbs.'

Much later, in 2014, John J. Kennedy wrote that 

For Bush, being able to attract only 18 percent of the two-party vote in [Pennsylvania's] largest city made winning the state's 23 electoral votes [in 2000] a daunting task. Losing the suburban vote once again, however, made it next to impossible. In fact, Gore's 54,000-vote margin in these four counties was greater than Bill Clinton's two totals combined.

However, he adds that 'Delaware and Montgomery Counties were particularly troublesome for the Bush campaign, where it dropped them by 12 and 10 points, respectively.' This might simply be a reflection of Bush's smaller margin of defeat in Bucks. However, in 2013, Al Hunt singled out just the two closer-in Main Line counties as holding the key to Romney's defeat in Pennsylvania: 'To understand why [Romney lost Pennsylvania], look at two suburban counties near Philadelphia: Delaware, a middle-class enclave, and Montgomery, a more affluent area...'. In 2016, John King indicated a reason why Bucks County might have been given less emphasis than Montgomery and Delaware, when he pointed out that it was 'the more blue-collar of the suburbs' (contrasting it with Chester County, which he indicated as having 'used to be the more Republican or affluent county'). And in fact, Montgomery County has given Republicans their largest raw vote margin in Pennsylvania ten times, and Delaware County has done so once, but Bucks never has. And while it is true that Montgomery and Delaware were historically the two largest of the four suburban counties, in 1976, for example, Ford carried both Montgomery and Delaware by over 10% but Bucks by only 3.4%; and, despite being the third-largest county he carried in the state, it gave him only his tenth-largest raw vote margin in the state.

Another thing about Oakland, Montgomery, and Delaware, in particular, is that they were mentioned in 2012 in a similar vein as 'Romney must-win counties', even after they had cast two recent votes for losing Democrats. We see above that Al Hunt blamed Montgomery and Delaware--not Chester (which Romney won)--for Romney's loss in Pennsylvania. Even as late as 2016, Ron Brownstein was talking of all four of the Philadelphia-area suburban counties in a similar vein as Chuck Todd was talking about Hillsborough, FL, and as Brit Hume was talking about both Hillsborough, FL and Loudoun, VA (i.e., as counties it was surprising Trump could win the state--or be competitive in the state--without carrying): 

Yes, there were a few big places where she [Hillary Clinton] underperformed like Milwaukee. But if you look at for example at Philadelphia and the four suburban counties outside of Philadelphia, she did fine; she did what she needed to do.

Regarding Oakland County, in 2012, Ed Sarpolus said that 'There's no way that Romney can win [Michigan] losing Oakland County'--a county described by Robert David Sullivan as an 'affluent, suburban county'. Regarding a third county from the above list, political scientist Gary Rose thought it was possible Romney could win back Fairfield County, CT, described by Micah Cohen as 'dotted by Wall Street bedroom communities'. Rose added: 'There's a lot of people in Fairfield County like Romney...They even look like Romney.' (Of course, Fairfield wouldn't have been treated akin to a 'Romney must-win county', because, whether Romney won Fairfield or not, there was never any doubt that Connecticut overall would vote Democratic.) (In the event, Romney won only one of the counties on the above list that went on to vote for Gore in 2000--Monmouth, NJ, which had also voted for Bush in '04 and McCain in '08.)

Other of the above counties can be found being described around the time of the 2000 election as spiritually important for the Republican Party (and particularly so as bastions of suburban Republicanism, in many cases). Kenneth R. Weiss described Ventura County in 1991 as home to 'Anglo[-Saxon] bedroom communities of aerospace employees, managers and other white-collar workers who make up the core of Reagan’s constituency'.* In 1996--even after Bill Clinton had won it for the second time in a row--the CQ Almanac characterised the 'beachhead' of St Louis County, MO as a 'Republican-Oriented Suburb'. In a 1997 analysis of how suburban counties had voted in 1996, Rhodes Cook described Lake County, IL (along with Oakland and Fairfield, all counties Clinton had flipped the previous year) as 'synonymous with affluence'. (He also noted that Clinton had just become the first Democrat since 1964 to win Bergen County, NJ, which he implies was less affluent, but in any case had a much more sterling Republican voting record at the time than the other county in whose company he mentions it, Macomb.) In October 2000, Lawrence C. Levy, analysing why Southern suburbs were more likely to stay Republican than suburbs elsewhere, wrote that 'This [Orange County, FL] is a place where a Nassau County moderate Republican would be more liberal than the typical Democrat.' And on election night 2000 itself, Tom Brokaw said that 'Palm Beach County obviously tilts more heavily toward the Republicans' (in contrast to Dade and Broward).

In more retroactive accounts of some other of the above counties, in 2012, Micah Cohen described Santa Barbara County as 'historically a bastion of wealthy, country-club Republicans'; Jeff Mapes described Washington County, Oregon as having been 'the spiritual home of the moderate Republicans who once dominated Oregon politics'; and Nate Cohn named Franklin County, Ohio, along with Bucks, PA, and Orange, FL, as one of the counties that 'ascended to national preeminence as the closest counties in the closest states in the 2000 election'. (Conversely, substantially earlier, in his 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips credited 'the growth of Bernalillo County' with having 'a similar influence on New Mexico' as Maricopa's had had on Arizona, i.e., in having 'transformed Arizona...to one of the most Republican states in the nation.' [p. 464])

The counties generally mentioned above are likely the counties that would have been seen as 'Bush must-win counties' (if a list of such counties had been more systematically compiled in 2000, as it was in 2012), less perhaps Nassau (which was in a state that was decidedly expected to go to Gore) and Palm Beach (which after all Bush Sr had won Florida without in 1992--albeit only very narrowly). Insofar as California was seen as a battleground state, San Bernardino County would almost certainly have had to have been listed alongside Ventura and Santa Barbara, even though it had a somewhat different character, as alluded to by Jeff Horseman in 2016:

Trump’s base is white voters without college degrees, and the Inland Empire has more of those than other parts of California. Just 30 percent of whites 25 and older in Riverside County – 35 percent in San Bernardino County – hold an associate’s degree or higher compared to 51 percent statewide, census figures show.

Inland whites may be more culturally conservative and more likely to vote for Trump than Republicans in coastal areas, said Loren Collingwood, a UC Riverside assistant political science professor.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bush expanded his margin in San Bernardino County in 2004 by 10.2%, whereas he expanded his margin in Ventura County by just 2.63% (less than he expanded his national margin by), and Kerry expanded Gore's margin in Santa Barbara County by 6.7%.

But Santa Barbara accounted for just 1.47% of California's total vote in 1996, and Ventura, for just 2.45%. (The smallest percentages of their states' total '08 vote that any of the Romney must-win counties accounted for were 3.75% [Loudoun, VA] and 3.84% [Forsyth, NC], but both were joined by at least one other, larger county. The smallest percentage of its state's total '08 vote that any Romney must-win county that was the only one in its state accounted for was 4.23% [Chester, PA].)

In that sense, Bush would have won only two swing states in the same surprising manner in which Trump won Pennsylvania and Florida in 2016: Missouri, which he became the first Republican ever to win without St Louis County, and Ohio, which he became the first Republican to win without Franklin County since 1892. Of course, that's the same number that Trump won, but in a certain sense, Bush had been expected to win Ohio; CBS did not include Ohio on its list of battleground states in 2000, and Judy Woodruff expressed some mild surprise when Ohio wasn't able to be called for Bush.

In New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico, Bush lost both the hypothetical 'Bush must-win county' (or counties), and also lost the state. In Florida, he won the hypothetical Bush must-win county, and won the state. In California and Illinois, he won the hypothetical Bush must-win county or counties (or most of them--he lost Santa Barbara County), but lost the state. 

Unlike with Trump, Bush didn't really get much 'credit' for what he was able to accomplish in spite of losing these counties. Instead, the effects of his losing these counties mostly showed up as surprising weaknesses on Bush's part, such as how long it took to call Ohio. Woodruff also prefaces the quick projection of Michigan (where Gore carried Oakland County) by saying 'The stunner at this hour is that we can call Al Gore the winner in the Wolverine State.' After Arizona is called for Bush (after a fairly long delay), Woodruff says, 'But what'll be interesting to find out is why it took so long to fall into the Bush column.' (Bush had failed to reclaim the state's second-largest county, Pima, and while a Republican had carried the state without carrying Pima County before--in 1964 and in 1992--it was only very narrowly in those cases.) And while it was accepted by election night that Florida was a battleground state, it was one in which, in the end, a Gore victory would have been seen as something of an upset; as 'Mark27' writes, '[I]t was still rather baffling four years later when the 2000 cycle began to fully take form and Florida was showing up as a key battleground.' And on election night, during the period when Florida had been called for Gore, Candy Crowley reported that the Bush campaign had 'counted [it] in their column'. Apparently, this was true to some extent even of New Mexico--historically part of the 'Republican L'--'Mark27' describes the state's voting for Gore as having been 'somewhat [surprising]'. And of course, while Bush had won back Hillsborough County, he had lost Pinellas and Palm Beach (which were more deeply historically Republican, at the time, than Hillsborough--before 1992, both had voted Republican in every election from 1948 through 1988 save [only in Pinellas' case] 1964, whereas Hillsborough had voted for Truman, Kennedy, and Carter in 1976). And in New Mexico, Bush had lost Bernalillo County, which had handed the state to Ford in 1976.

Bush did become the first Republican ever to win Louisiana without Caddo Parish and to win Kentucky without Jefferson County, but he got little 'credit' for these wins. By election day, neither was seen as a battleground state, even though both had voted for Bill Clinton twice. Perhaps Gore shouldn't have been given a pass on ceding these states (if that is what he did)--early in 2004, John Kerry was given a chance in Louisiana (with the state Democratic Party chairman identifying Calcasieu Parish, the state's largest 'Bush breakthrough' parish and one of the larger ones nationally, as Kerry's 'must-win' parish), and at one point in 2000, Gore held a four-point lead in Louisiana. On election night, Peter Jennings said (shortly after calling the state for Bush) that Louisiana had been 'probably the most contested state in the South in this cycle' (one has to imagine he was mentally excluding Clinton's and Gore's home states of Arkansas and Tennessee, the historically Democratic state of West Virginia, and transplant-laden Florida).

Of Kentucky, which was a poll-closing call for Bush, Bill Schneider said, 'Clinton carried it by the narrowest margin of any state he carried in 1996, so if George Bush was going to win, he had to take Kentucky.' But later that evening, Bill Schneider is unmoved when Nevada is too close to call (in some contrast to Dan Rather, who described it as 'widely expected to go for Bush'). Nevada was Clinton's second-closest state in 1996, and his margin in Nevada (1.02%) was only trivially larger than his margin in Kentucky (0.96%). Even more bizarrely, and even more at odds with his point about Kentucky, Schneider says of Colorado, which also was unable to be called forthwith, as a state that 'could have gone either way' because it had 'switched from Clinton in 1992 to Dole in 1996'--a comment which openly contradicts what he had written earlier that year about the Dole states:

Start with the 18 states that President Bush carried in 1992. Let's lose the two Bush states that switched to Clinton in 1996, Arizona and Florida. But Bob Dole added three new states to the GOP column in 1996, Colorado, Georgia, and Montana. That's the anti-Clinton base, Dole's 19 states.

Gore is Clinton's vice president and political soul mate, so the anti-Clinton base will very likely turn into the anti-Gore base. And since George W. Bush appears to be running stronger than Dole did four years ago, let's assume Bush will hold on to the Dole states.

In 2019, Karl Rove recounted that Bush's 2000 strategy involved winning 'four historically Democrat[ic] border states, that had voted for Clinton-Gore twice: Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and and West Virginia.' (He further noted that Bob Dole had lost West Virginia, in particular, by '16 points'; it was actually 14.75%, and Dole lost Louisiana by only a little less, 12.07%.) Rove's analysis doesn't always make the most sense (especially when shortly after the above comment, he implies that Montana was possibly doubtful for Bush despite having voted for Bob Dole); but here, it is arguably a corrective to the widespread nonchalance at Bush's easy carriage of Kentucky. At a bare minimum, it seems that Bush should have been given 'credit' for making Kentucky a poll-closing call, which likely boded ill for Gore's chances of carrying any of West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas. 

Trump also got some credit, if only over part of election night, for keeping (or appearing to keep) Virginia close despite losing Loudoun County--but in the end, Trump lost Virginia by 5.32%, a slightly larger margin than that whereby Gore won Michigan (5.13%), and a decidedly larger margin than that whereby Gore won Pennsylvania (4.17%). In other words, Bush was actually able to make Michigan and Pennsylvania more competitive despite losing Oakland, Montgomery, and Delaware Counties, than Trump was able to make Virginia despite losing Loudoun County--but that's not the way it came across.

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Aside from these counties' voting records, many of them were close enough in 1996 that not only their prior voting record, but also their margin for Clinton in '96, should have made Gore carrying them surprising. For example, theoretically, the following counties would have voted for Dole if Dole had been losing the national popular vote by 3.9% (the same margin whereby Romney lost the national popular vote in 2012):

Santa Barbara, CA (tie at Clinton +4.1%)
Oakland, MI (tie at Clinton +4.1%)
Bucks, PA (tie at Clinton +4.8%)
Franklin, OH (tie at Clinton +4.9%)
Lehigh, PA (tie at Clinton +5.2%)

This was also true of two smaller counties that were nevertheless large or sizeable with respect to their states. In 1996, Bill Clinton became the first Democrat to carry Montgomery County, Alabama (which cast 78,744 votes that year, or 5.13% of Alabama's total) since 1952; he won it by just 0.8% and won just a plurality. In 2000, Al Gore became the first Democrat since 1952 to win an outright majority in the county. In 1992, Bill Clinton became the second Democrat ever to carry Douglas County, Kansas (after Lyndon Johnson), in 1996, he carried it again (as it cast 37,800 votes, or 3.52% of Kansas' total vote that year), but by just 5.3% (making it 3.2% more Republican than the country--not quite enough to mean that it would have voted for Dole if Dole had been doing as well as Romney). In 2000, Gore became only the third Democrat ever to carry it, for only the fourth time ever. Both counties would go on to become the largest Democratic vote trove in their states before giving way to a still bigger county--Montgomery County in 2008, 2012, and 2016 (giving way to Jefferson County in 2020); Douglas County in 2016 (giving way to Johnson County in 2020).

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Many of these counties had long histories of having provided Republicans with their largest raw vote margins in their states in the postwar period: Fairfield, CT, Pinellas, FL, Jefferson, KY, Caddo, LA (thrice), Baltimore County, MD, Barnstable, MA, Oakland, MI, St Louis County, MO, Bergen, NJ, Bernalillo, NM, both Nassau and Suffolk, NY, Mecklenburg, NC (which Bush did reclaim, in 2000 at least), Washington, OR, and Montgomery, PA. A number of them had handed their states to Republican nominees at least once in the postwar period: Fairfield, CT, Baltimore County, MD, and Westchester and Nassau Counties, NY in 1948; Bergen, NJ in 1968; Washington, OR and Bernalillo, NM in 1976; and Barnstable, MA in 1980. (Several counties, including Clackamas and Marion, gave Ford his margin in Oregon in 1976, but his statewide margin was exceedingly close [0.16%], and Washington County gave him by far his largest margin, accounting for 1.70% of the state's total vote. [His second-largest raw vote margin, out of Clackamas, accounted for 0.50% of the state's total vote.] His raw-vote margin out of Washington was also bigger than Carter's raw-vote margin out of any county in the state, and was the only one of which this was the case.)

These things were also true of a number of the Romney must-win counties: Jefferson, CO, Washoe, NV, Hillsborough, NH, Hamilton, OH, and Henrico, VA had each given Republicans their largest raw vote margins in their states on a number of occasions since the Second World War, and Henrico had handed Virginia to Ford in 1976. (Hillsborough, FL had been one of a very large number of counties to individually hand Florida to Bush in 2000 [but ranked merely 14th in terms of its raw-vote margin for Bush in the state]; and DuPage, IL and San Diego, CA--each of which would likely have been accounted a 'Romney must-win county' if their states had been in play in 2012--had also both handed their states to at least one Republican since the war.)

(It was after the 1952 election that Senator Robert Taft made the observation that 'the Democratic Party will never win another national election until it solves the problem of the suburbs'--although the criticality of suburban counties to the GOP was arguably already evident in Dewey's wins in New York, Connecticut, and Maryland in 1948.)

Bush became the first Republican to win the national election without carrying Washington County, OR, Barnstable County, MA, Delaware County, PA, or Passaic County, NJ (or, in passing, Cheshire County, NH). In 2016, Trump became the first Republican to win the national election without carrying DuPage, Lake, and Kane Counties, IL, Clackamas County, OR, or Chester County, PA (of which all save Clackamas had the electoral profile of a 'Romney must-win county'). (Incidentally, Jonathan Karl was incorrect about his observation about Hillsborough County, FL--as of election day 2016, no Republican had won the national election without carrying Hillsborough County, FL since 1924, or had won Florida without carrying Hillsborough County since 1960.)

* 'Anglo-' is a Late Latin prefix used to create compounds in which something having to do with England or the English is involved. The '-o' is there to enable the prefix to join to another word: 'Anglo-French', 'Anglo-Dutch', 'Anglo-Saxon'. Hence, there is only an 'apparent parallelism' with 'Latino', itself not an English word (in 2016, Kerry Sanders referred to 'Latins' in the context of US politics). It makes about as much sense to use 'Anglo' as a standalone noun as it does to use any number of other, similar prefixes, such as 'Sino', 'Franco', or 'Russo'. 

When 'Anglo' is used alone, I interpret the writer as intending what used to be meant by 'Anglo-Saxon', a compound term that used to describe things or people having to do specifically with England, a nation whose origin lay with a group of closely related West Teutonic peoples, primarily the Angles and the Saxons. In the past, when 'Anglo-Saxon' was truncated to one word, it was generally 'Saxon' (as testified to by the title of Normans and Saxons, that of Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, the lyrics of 'Song of the Celts', and the derogatory term used in Scotland, 'Sassenach', which derives from 'Saxon').

If 'white Protestant' is what is meant, that is what should be said or written, but I will not creatively interpret someone as meaning that in a quote; but neither will I let the incorrect standalone 'Anglo' stand.