Top conservative friendly counties, 1990 and 2021?
In 2010, Chris Palko compiled a list of the 'top 20 conservative-friendly counties' (setting a population threshold of 50,000). Electoral behaviour in the prior two elections was one criterion, although not the only one. The lowest vote share any of them gave Bush in 2004 was 66.05% (Delaware County, Ohio), and the lowest vote share any of them gave McCain in 2008 was 58.03% (Douglas County, Colorado). (This is not including #20 Mat-Su Borough, as Alaska does not report election results by borough.)
I hypothesised that a similar list compiled in 1990 would have a higher population threshold (for the sake of convenience, say, having cast at least 100,000 votes in 1988), but a somewhat lower vote share threshold--perhaps having given Bush Sr at least 60% of its vote in 1988.
If Palko had used these two criteria in 2010 (applying them to the 2004 election), he would have had these 37 counties (the 37 counties that cast at least 100,000 votes in 2004, in which Bush got over 60% of the vote) available to him (Republican vote shares in 2004 and 2008 are in parentheses; italicised counties actually were on Palko's list):
Kern, CA (66.5%, 57.6%)
Placer, CA (62.6%, 54.5%)
El Paso, CO (66.7%, 58.7%)
Douglas, CO (66.5%, 58.0%)
Escambia, FL (65.3%, 59.0%)
Collier, FL (65.0%, 60.8%)
Lake, FL (60.015%, 56.2%)
Cobb, GA (61.9%, 54.1%)
Gwinnett, GA (65.7%, 54.6%)
Ada, ID (61.1%, 51.6%)
Allen, IN (63.3%, 51.7%)
Hamilton, IN (74.2%, 60.6%)
Johnson, KS (61.1%, 53.7%)
Sedgwick, KS (62.1%, 55.2%)
Jefferson, LA (61.5%, 62.5%)
St Tammany, LA (74.7%, 75.8%)
Harford, MD (63.5%, 58.2%)
Ottawa, MI (71.6%, 61.0%)
Greene, MO (62.2%, 57.1%)
Ocean, NJ (60.1%, 58.4%)
Butler, OH (65.9%, 60.5%)
Oklahoma, OK (64.2%, 58.4%)
Tulsa, OK (64.4%, 62.2%)
Lancaster, PA (65.8%, 55.2%)
York, PA (63.7%, 56.0%)
Cumberland, PA (63.8%, 56.0%)
Greenville, SC (66.0%, 61.0%)
Knox, TN (62.1%, 60.7%)
Tarrant, TX (62.4%, 55.4%)
Collin, TX (71.2%, 62.2%)
Denton, TX (70.0%, 61.6%)
Montgomery, TX (78.1%, 75.8%)
Williamson, TX (65.0%, 55.5%)
Utah, UT (86.0%, 77.7%)
Davis, UT (78.9%, 69.7%)
Chesterfield, VA (62.6%, 53.3%)
Waukesha, WI (67.3%, 62.3%)
Using these slightly more permissive criteria would not really have allowed Palko to comprehensively or nearly-comprehensively include the large, famous bastions of postwar suburban conservatism. Of the above, only El Paso (CO), Cobb, Ada, Johnson (KS), Jefferson (LA), Oklahoma, Tulsa, Greenville, Knox (TN), and Waukesha had provided Republicans with their largest raw vote margins in their respective states at least thrice in the 1948-88 period (see here). None of the counties that had repeatedly given Republicans their largest raw-vote margins in the postwar period in the mega-states (states with at least 14 electoral votes) would have been eligible.
However, these slightly more permissive criteria would have allowed someone composing a similar list in 1990 to include a great many more very large, then-iconically conservative counties. For example, here is a list of the counties that cast at least 100,000 votes in 1988, that gave Republicans their largest raw-vote margin in their states at least thrice in the 1948-88 period, and that gave Bush Sr over 60% of the vote in 1988 (I'm including San Diego County, which never gave Republicans their largest raw-vote margin in California, but handed the state to Nixon in 1960--the only county other than Orange to do so) (number of votes cast in 1988, Bush Sr's '88 vote share, and Bush Sr's '88 raw vote margin are in parentheses):
Maricopa, AZ (681,581) (64.9%) (211,385)
Orange, CA (865,307) (67.8%) (317,217)
San Diego, CA (869,195) (60.2%) (189,879)
El Paso, CO (138,458) (70.2%) (56,970)
Cobb, GA (146,658) (72.7%) (67,324)
DuPage, IL (314,054) (69.4%) (123,622)
Johnson, KS (152,199) (62.8%) (40,408)
Jefferson, LA (166,372) (66.7%) (57,907)
Oakland, MI (462,488) (61.3%) (108,614)
Hillsborough, NH (135,778) (65.0%) (42,462)
Rockingham, NH (101,405) (63.2%) (28,259)
Suffolk, NY (514,350) (60.5%) (112,027)
Hamilton, OH (370,384) (61.3%) (86,650)
Oklahoma, OK (212,891) (63.6%) (59,564)
Tulsa, OK (197,763) (64.5%) (58,468)
Montgomery, PA (282,870) (60.2%) (60,460)
Knox, TN (115,521) (63.3%) (31,263)
Fairfax, VA (328,365) (61.1%) (74,930)
Waukesha, WI (148,893) (60.8%) (32,869)
This list, then, would have been able to include the counties that had given Republicans their largest raw-vote margins a majority or plurality of times in the 1948-88 period in the mega-states of California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (as well as four times in New York--Nassau had done so six times). Because of this, I would hypothesise that a list-maker in 1990 might have used these more relaxed electoral criteria to come up with the most 'conservative-friendly' counties of the day. (Of course, at least prima facie, some of the above counties would have qualified by Palko's apparent electoral criteria as well, having given Bush Sr over 66.05% of the vote in 1988--but because Bush Sr got a higher vote share nationally in 1988 than George W. Bush got in 2004, some of these would still have been less Republican vis-à-vis the nation overall in 1988, than any of Palko's counties was in 2004. Amongst these would have been the county long known as 'America's Most Conservative County', Orange, CA.)
Of course, not all of the above counties would necessarily have made a 1990 list of the most conservative-friendly counties in the US (such a list would likely not have included two counties in Oklahoma, or two counties in New Hampshire, for example); and there are still others that would have been eligible. In Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey (as well as Colorado, where Jefferson County had more typically been the biggest Republican vote trove than El Paso County), a smaller county (but one still casting over 100,000 votes) displaced the usual biggest Republican vote trove(s) in 1988; in each case, Bush Sr got over 60% in the new biggest Republican vote trove:
Orange, FL (172,770) (67.9%) (63,214)
Anne Arundel, MD (155,101) (63.5%) (43,100)
Morris, NJ (187,249) (68.1%) (68,699)
This would allow for the inclusion of at least one county in two further mega-states (one of which gave Bush Sr his largest raw-vote margin of any state in 1988). Orange, FL, in particular, was an explosively-growing county in an explosively-growing state; it cast 71.6% more vote in 1988 than in 1968 (as compared to the nation overall casting 25.1% more vote in '88 than in '68).
There would also likely have been Tarrant County, the largest county in Texas where Bush Sr got over 60% of the vote (Texas being the only mega-state where I haven't listed a possible county yet):
Tarrant, TX (396,237) (61.2%) (91,350)
In another two celebrated bastions of suburban conservatism which had frequently given Republicans their second-largest raw vote margins in their states, Bush Sr fell just hundredths of a percent short of 60% (and won by a margin of over 20%):
Franklin, OH (377,357) (59.96%) (78,680)
Delaware, PA (282,870) (59.95%) (60,460)
And he fell a bit more significantly short of 60% in his biggest vote trove (and the biggest county) in the Most Republican State for the fourth time in a row by 1988, but, again, won a > 20% margin over Dukakis:
Salt Lake, UT (276,903) (59.07%) (56,104) (Dukakis received 38.81%)
A third iconic coastal county in the country's largest state could have been included as well (Ventura County, home of Simi Valley, where Bush Sr got 61.6% and drew a 58,539-vote plurality). Some other notable bastions of postwar conservatism (and then-frequent top GOP vote troves for their states) would still have fallen short, although in many cases not by much: Mecklenburg, NC (59.4%; 34,329-vote plurality), Marion, IN (58.6%; 55,892-vote plurality), Dallas, TX (58.4%; 103,896-vote plurality), Fairfield, CT (59.0%; 71,686-vote plurality), Bergen, NJ (58.2%; 66,230-vote plurality).
A reasonably plausible 1990 list might have looked like this: Maricopa, Orange (CA), San Diego, Ventura, El Paso (CO), Orange (FL), Cobb, DuPage, Jefferson (LA), Oakland, Salt Lake, Suffolk (NY), Hamilton (OH), Franklin (OH), Montgomery (PA), Delaware (PA), Tarrant, and Fairfax. Such a list would have focussed on particularly iconic counties in large and medium-sized states. (None of these particular counties so much as gave Bush Sr a raw vote margin of fewer than 50,000, the figure Palko used as his population threshold in 2010.) It would also include counties in almost every mega-state (and multiple counties in the nation's largest state), as well as counties in every region. Palko's list, by contrast, is concentrated in the (interior/Alaska) Mountain West and the South; the only states outside those two regions with any counties are Ohio and Indiana. There are none in the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, or in the country's largest state, California.
There is some evidence that such a list made around 1990 would have used these (slightly) more relaxed standards. In a 1991 article (before Bill Clinton carried the county twice), Elton Gallegly was quoted as calling Ventura County 'Reagan country'. In a 1990 article, Thomas B. Edsall paraphrased Republican voting analyst John Morgan as naming Orange, CA, DuPage, IL, and Oakland (and Macomb), MI as specific examples of suburban areas that were now able to '[cancel] out' 'Democratic big-city margins'. (Bush Sr did get 60.33% of the vote in Macomb County in 1988, and netted 62,776 votes out of it; however, Macomb had voted Democratic as recently as 1968 [for a losing Democrat at that], whereas, although Palko didn't explicitly make this a criterion, the most recently any of the counties on his list had voted Democratic was 1980. Oakland--and many of the other counties listed above--voted for Johnson in 1964, but that was a national landslide, and the last Democratic landslide as of 1990 [or now]. [Of the above-listed counties, only Cobb and, particularly noteworthily, Hillsborough [NH] had voted Democratic any more recently than 1964 as of 1990--Cobb for favourite son Jimmy Carter in 1976, when he carried every county in the state; and Hillsborough, like Macomb, for Hubert Humphrey in 1968.])
In a 1997 analysis, Cook Rhodes notes that '[f]or a generation after World War II, the burgeoning suburbs were a cornerstone for the GOP presidential victories of Dwight D. Eisenhower to George [H. W.] Bush', and goes on to note by name Fairfield, CT, Oakland, MI, and Lake, IL as amongst the suburban counties ('synonymous with affluence') with a 1990 population of over 500,000 that Clinton had won over to the Democracy in 1996 for the first time 'since the 1960s'. (The ambiguous phrasing allows for a county's last Democratic vote to have been either in 1964, in the Johnson landslide, or in 1968, for Humphrey as he narrowly lost to Nixon, two quite different kinds of last Democratic votes; but, as it happens, Fairfield, Oakland, and Lake had all last voted Democratic in 1964. When Rhodes separately mentions Macomb County, he notes specifically that Clinton had become the first Democrat 'since Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968' to carry the county.) Lake County had never given Republicans their largest raw vote margin in Illinois, but DuPage stayed loyal to Dole in 1996, and Lake had consistently provided Republicans with their second-largest raw vote margin in Illinois in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992 (giving way to McHenry in 1996).
And in an October 2000 article, Lawrence C. Levy described a Florida Congressional district including much of Orange and Brevard Counties as 'the GOP's firewall in both this decisive state and suburban America' (with an emphasis on larger Orange County; he describes Orlando, the principal city of Orange County, as 'a city that somehow came of age after its suburbs', and Linda Chapin, the [ultimately unsuccessful] Democratic candidate to represent the district, as the 'mother of Orange County'). Brevard and Orange have proceeded to take very different political trajectories, and it could be that Levy paired them simply because of the contours of the relevant Congressional district, rather than (or more than) because of actual shared characteristics. (He notes that 'Even Bob Dole carried Orange and Brevard, though by margins so small
that they failed to wipe out big Democrat votes in the Miami area'; while Dole's margins in neither county were particularly robust, he did win Brevard by 3.9% and 7,577 votes, whereas he won Orange by 0.23%, which, even in such a large county, translated to a net of 520 votes, less than a tenth what he netted out of smaller Brevard.)
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What about a similar list in 2021?
Such a list would likely include none of the counties on Palko's 2010 list, given Trump's performance in them. And if we are focussed not only on population but on growth (a quality Palko noted of a number of his counties), that makes our task even more difficult. That said, there are counties here and there that are noteworthy for seeing both their populations and their Republican vote shares grow over the past six cycles. (The percentage in parentheses is how much more vote the county cast in 2020 than in 2000; for reference, the nation overall cast 50.24% more vote in 2020 than in 2000.)
Mohave, AZ (+137.2%): The Republican vote share has grown in each of the past seven elections, including 2008. Trump got 72.9% in 2016 and 74.9% in 2020. It became the GOP's biggest vote trove in Arizona in 2020. (Trump netted 0.0300% and 0.0339% of the national vote out of Mohave County in 2016 and 2020, respectively.)
Gila, AZ (+56.1%): This county is smaller and slower-growing than Mohave; its population as of 2010 was 53,597. The Republican vote share in this county has risen for the past seven straight elections save, oddly, 2012; but it was higher in 2016 than in 2008. In 2020 it jumped from 63.0% to 66.3%. It voted for Bill Clinton twice; Biden became the first Democrat to carry Arizona despite losing Gila County in the state's history. (0.0053%/0.0060%)
Citrus, FL (+62.8%): This is the largest county in Florida where Trump got at least 66.05% of the vote and increased his vote share in 2020 (from 67.7% to 69.9%). The Republican vote share has risen for seven straight elections, including 2008, here. (0.0232%/0.0242%)
Sumter, FL (+315.5%): This was perhaps the classic growingly Republican county until 2020. The Republican vote share rose in every election in Sumter from 1996 through 2016, and at the same time, the county exploded in population. Bush netted 2,490 votes from Sumter in 2000; in 2016, Trump netted 30,092 votes from the same county. In 2020, Trump's vote share went backwards (from 68.3% to 67.8%), even as nationally it rose from 46.1% to 46.9%. That should be concerning, but Trump's 2020 vote share was still higher than any other Republican's this century apart from himself in 2016. (0.0220%/0.0211%)
Walton, FL (+138.6%): The Florida Panhandle became politically famous after 2000 as an easily-overlooked Republican counterweight (in the Central Time Zone) to the Gold Coast. But Republican vote shares in Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa Counties have been slightly declining in recent cycles. Not so in Walton--at least, as in Sumter, not until 2020, when Trump fell from 76.0% to 75.2%. However, as in Sumter, Trump got a higher vote share than any Republican this century in 2020 apart from himself in 2016. (0.0138%/0.0143%)
Carroll, GA (+111.6%): This Atlanta exurb was the largest county in Georgia in which Trump got over 66.05% and increased his vote share in 2020--in fact, it was the largest red county in Georgia in which Trump even increased his vote share at all. The increase in the Republican vote share has not been as steady in Carroll as in the above counties--in fact, Trump's vote share in 2016 was lower than Romney's in 2012, and no Republican since has matched Bush's 70.3% in 2004. But Trump's 68.8% in 2020 was an improvement not only on his own vote share in 2016 but on Romney's in 2012, and was the second-highest of any Republican this century. (0.0129%/0.0134%)
Floyd, GA (+54.1%): Carroll was the largest red county in Georgia in which Trump increased his vote share in 2020, but Floyd was the largest Trump 2020 country county in Georgia (that is, the largest county in Georgia in which Trump got over 60%, and a higher vote share than Reagan in 1984 or any nominee since). Trump's 69.9% in the county in 2020 stands as the highest vote share of any Republican in the county this century, and indeed as the highest vote share of any nominee of either party in the county since 1972. It is also the (now-)home county of Marjorie Taylor Greene (and the second-largest county in her district, after Paulding), perhaps giving it something of a similar stature as Newt Gingrich's Cobb County once had (despite its relatively diminutive size). (0.0109%/0.0107%)
Kootenai, ID (+104.3%): This county, far away from the Boise area, became the biggest Republican vote trove in Idaho in 2020. But despite its seemingly isolated location, it is growing rapidly. Neither McCain nor Romney was able to match Bush's 2004 66.3% in the county, but Trump got 67.0% in 2016 and improved even further to 70.2% in 2020. (0.0206%/0.0243%)
Elko, NV (+54.9%): In 2000, George W. Bush got 77.8% of the vote in Elko, the highest vote share of any nominee since William Jennings Bryan in 1896. He exceeded this with 78.0% in 2004, when Elko became the biggest Republican vote trove in the state, displacing Washoe. Bush's '04 vote share remains the high-water mark for the GOP this century in Elko, but Trump did improve from 73.0% to 76.2% in 2020, better than Romney (or Reagan in '84). (0.0074%/0.0077%)
Lyon, NV (+152.2%): In 2020, the title of the GOP's biggest vote trove in Nevada shifted from Elko to Lyon, one of only two cases where this title moved from a smaller to a larger county. The increase in the Republican vote share has not been as steady here; Bush improved by an impressive 4.3% here in 2004, but neither McCain nor Romney was able to match his 2004 vote share. With Trump's candidacy, the Republican vote share soared by 4.4% to 67.4% in 2016, and improved still further to 69.2% in 2020. (0.0072%/0.0079%)
Nye, NV (+108.3%): As of 2010, this county's population was 43,946, but it looks likely with its apparent rate of growth that it will soon exceed 50,000 if it has not already done so. Home to the late Dennis Hof (the 'Trump of Pahrump'), this county's Republican vote share has increased in all the past seven elections save 2008 (and Romney's was higher than Bush's in '04). The county seemed particularly energised by Trump, with the Republican vote share soaring by 7.7% to 68.0% in 2016; Trump improved still further to 69.1% in 2020. (0.0060%/0.0065%)
A giant, state-of-the-art library has been built. A shining new campus is opening for the community college. Firefighting and law enforcement services are top-notch. Children have access to high-quality schools, free swimming pools and a skate park.
Local residents are even proud of their landfill, particularly its high-tech recycling facility. And the county probably has more paved roads than any other in Wyoming. Although there's still no shortage of drive-through liquor stores and greasy spoon restaurants, this community of 25,000 now has a martini bar and a downtown cafe that serves vegetarian fare and fancy espresso drinks.
(0.0106%/0.0095%)
There are likely other similar counties, although they do seem comparatively rare. There are growing counties where the Republican vote share has been growing but has not hit 66%, such as Wright and Sherburne, MN (which cast 90.1% and 80.4% more vote, respectively, in 2020 than in 2000) and Hernando and Pasco, FL, to the south of Citrus (which cast 67.0% and 111.5% more vote, respectively, in 2020 than in 2000). In other counties, the Republican vote share had been growing until 2020 (as seen above in Sumter, FL--but, again, without ever hitting 66%): Berkeley, WV (a rare growing county in an otherwise demographically stagnant state--it cast 124.0% more vote in 2020 than in 2000--and the core of the 'most dynamic region of the state'); Horry, SC (which cast 152.2% more vote in 2020 than in 2000). (And some are simply still too small to satisfy Palko's population threshold: Crook County, Oregon, which cast 86.6% more vote in 2020 than in 2000, had a population of 20,978 as of 2010; Trump's vote share leapt there by 3.2% in 2020.)
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