Most Democratic and Republican States
While the title of Most Republican State was migrating from Vermont to Utah, it stopped in this Farm Belt state, which was Richard Nixon's best in 1960 (62.1%) and in 1968 (59.8%). [Robert David Sullivan]
Most National Republican/Whig State
1836: Vermont [7] (59.93%)
1840: Kentucky [15] (64.20%)
1844: Rhode Island [4] (59.55%)
1848: Rhode Island [4] (60.77%)
1852: Kentucky [12] (51.44%)
Most Republican State
1856: Vermont [5] (77.96%)
1860: Vermont [5] (75.86%)
1864: Kansas [3] (79.19%)
1868: Vermont [5] (78.57%)
1872: Vermont [5] (78.29%)
1876: Vermont [5] (68.30%)
1880: Vermont [5] (69.88%)
1884: Vermont [4] (66.52%)
1888: Vermont [4] (69.05%)
1892: Vermont [4] (68.09%)
1896: Vermont [4] (80.08%)
1900: Vermont [4] (75.73%)
1904: Vermont [4] (77.97%)
1908: Vermont [4] (75.08%)
1912: (see note)
1916: Vermont [4] (62.43%)
1920: North Dakota [5] (77.79%)
1924: Vermont [4] (78.22%)
1928: Kansas [10] (72.02%)
1932: Vermont [3] (57.66%)
1936: Vermont [3] (56.39%)
1940: South Dakota [4] (57.41%)
1944: Kansas [8] (60.25%)
1948: Vermont [3] (61.54%)
1952: Vermont [3] (71.45%)
1956: Vermont [3] (72.16%)
1960: Nebraska [6] (62.07%)
1964: Mississippi [7] (87.14%)
1968: Nebraska [5] (59.82%)
1972: Mississippi [7] (78.20%)
1976: Utah [4] (62.44%)
1980: Utah [4] (72.77%)
1984: Utah [5] (74.50%)
1988: Utah [5] (66.22%)
1992: (see note)
1996: Utah [5] (54.37%)
2000: Wyoming [3] (67.76%)
2004: Utah [5] (71.54%)
2008: Oklahoma [7] (65.65%)
2012: Utah [6] (72.79%)
2016: West Virginia [5] (68.50%) *
2020: Wyoming [3] (69.94%)
Most Democratic State
1836: New Hampshire [7] (75.01%)
1840: Missouri [4] (56.63%)
1844: Arkansas [3] (63.01%)
1848: Texas [4] (70.29%)
1852: Texas [4] (73.07%)
1856: Arkansas [4] (67.12%)
1860: (see note)
1864: Kentucky [11] (69.83%)
1868: Kentucky [11] (74.55%)
1872: Texas [8] (57.07%)
1876: Georgia [11] (72.03%)
1880: South Carolina [7] (65.70%)
1884: South Carolina [9] (75.25%)
1888: South Carolina [9] (82.28%)
1892: (see note)
1896: Mississippi [9] (91.04%)
1900: South Carolina [9] (92.96%)
1904: South Carolina [9] (95.36%)
1908: South Carolina [9] (93.84%)
1912: South Carolina [9] (95.94%)
1916: South Carolina [9] (96.71%)
1920: South Carolina [9] (96.05%)
1924: South Carolina [9] (96.56%)
1928: South Carolina [9] (91.39%)
1932: South Carolina [8] (98.03%)
1936: South Carolina [8] (98.57%)
1940: Mississippi [9] (95.70%)
1944: Mississippi [9] (93.56%)
1948: Texas [23] (65.96%)
1952: Georgia [12] (69.66%)
1956: Georgia [12] (66.48%)
1960: Rhode Island [4] (63.63%)
1964: Rhode Island [4] (80.87%)
1968: Rhode Island [4] (64.03%)
1972: Massachusetts [14] (54.20%)
1976: Georgia [12] (66.74%)
1980: Georgia [12] (55.76%)
1984: Minnesota [10] (49.72%)
1988: Rhode Island [4] (55.64%)
1992: (see note)
1996: Massachusetts [12] (61.47%)
2000: Rhode Island [4] (60.99%)
2004: Massachusetts [12] (61.94%)
2008: Hawaii [4] (71.85%)
2012: Hawaii [4] (70.55%)
2016: Hawaii [4] (62.22%)
2020: Vermont [3] (66.09%)
* This is according to the official FEC report, which appears to be the source used by Cook Rhodes in his America Votes 32. Trump’s vote shares in Wyoming and West Virginia were very close, and other sources have his vote share in Wyoming ahead of that in West Virginia in 2016.
Note
There have been some elections in which the question of which state was the Most Republican or Most Democratic State wasn't all that clear-cut.
1860
In 1860, the regular Democratic nominee, Stephen Douglas's, best state was New Jersey, which had never been the Most Democratic State before and never would be again. The nominee of the Charleston bolters, who was endorsed by three of the four living former nominees of the party (Cass, Pierce, and Buchanan), John Breckinridge's, best state was Texas, as it had been for Cass and Pierce and as it would be for Greeley and Truman.
1892
In 1892, Cleveland's best state was Florida, where he got 85.01% of the vote.
As with New Jersey, Florida had never been the Most Democratic State before, and never would be again. Unlike with New Jersey in 1860, Cleveland got quite a high vote share in Florida--but, probably not coincidentally, it was also the only state in the union in which his major party opponent, Benjamin Harrison, was not on the ballot in 1892.
That Harrison's absence from the ballot in Florida likely had an idiosyncratic effect on the state vote is typified by the fact that, from 1836 on, only five states have ever given a nominee over 83.3% of the vote: South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Colorado, and Florida. Of these five states, three--South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana--did so more than once. South Carolina did so in every election from 1896 through 1944; Mississippi, in every election from 1896 through 1948 save 1928 and again in 1964; and Louisiana, in 1904, 1908, 1916, 1932, 1936, and 1940. (Colorado did so only once, in 1896, for Bryan.)
These three states--South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana--were the three most Democratic states in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1916, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, and 1940 (in that order in every election except 1940, when Mississippi was first and South Carolina, second). They were also Bryan's three best Southern states in 1896 (again, with Mississippi and South Carolina switching places), and had been Cleveland's three best states in 1888.
There was no particular state that was fourth for the Democrats on a similarly regular basis in this period, and it certainly wasn't Florida with any particular frequency. Florida was the fourth-most Democratic state between 1888 and 1940 (inclusive) once: in 1900. The fourth-most Democratic state was Georgia in 1888, 1912, 1916, 1924, 1932, and 1936 (and Georgia was third in 1920, when Louisiana slipped to fourth); Alabama in 1904 and 1940; Arkansas in 1928 (Arkansas was also Bryan's fourth-best Southern state in 1896); and Texas in 1908.
Furthermore, Florida and Colorado are the only states where any nominee (from 1836 on) has received over 83.3% of the vote, but Franklin Roosevelt did not. In other words, Florida is the only Southern state where someone has received over 83.3% of the vote, but Franklin Roosevelt did not. And in all three of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana--but not in Florida--FDR holds the record for the highest vote share ever received by a presidential nominee (as he does, in fact, in every state of the Old Confederacy--save Florida). In fact, Florida remains the only state in which the record for highest presidential vote share from 1836 on still belongs to Grover Cleveland. Wilson had set the record in a number of Southern states in 1916, but every single one was wiped out by FDR in 1932. (Cleveland in 1892 had set the record in only three states--Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida--and neither of his records in the first two was able to survive so much as two elections.)
It seems that Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina were unique amongst Southern states, in that they did not have any ancient unionist populations that provided a reliable, albeit small, base for a non-moribund statewide GOP. In the elections from 1904 through 1928, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida were the only states of the Old Confederacy whose counties Democrats ever swept (in some cases, discounting counties that reported no results): South Carolina in all of them; Mississippi in all of them save 1928; Louisiana in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1928; and Florida in 1904, 1912, and 1916. (Republicans had habitually carried one to three counties in South Carolina up until as recently as 1900; Democrats had also swept Florida's counties in 1892, 1896, and 1900 [and Mississippi's in 1896 and 1900].)
However, even though Florida remained a small state up through the end of this period (in 1928 it still had only six electoral votes), it seems that Florida was already beginning, in this period, to attract the snowbird population that would go on to make it such an atypical Southern state. Taft's sole county win in 1908 was Calhoun County, whose previous voting pattern evinced no particularly unionist sentiment (1908 was its first Republican vote), nor was it a county that would go on to be one of Florida's growth centres. However, even though they were still small at the time, the counties Harding and Coolidge carried in the state sound familiar to us today as amongst the most significant counties in the state (due to their explosive growth, mostly fuelled by out-of-state--and likely out-of-region--migration): Harding carried Broward, Osceola, and Palm Beach; and Coolidge carried Palm Beach and Pinellas. And of course, alone amongst Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Florida, Florida voted for Hoover in 1928 (powered, at least in part, by a > 50% margin in Pinellas County, already the state's fourth-largest county). It was likely this that prevented Florida ever reaching the kind of near-unanimous Democratic support achieved in other Southern states without ancestral unionist populations. Whatever it was, it appeared to have been at work from the beginning of the period when the threesome of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana regularly occupied the three top spots as the most Democratic states in the country. (In 1884, Cleveland's three best states were South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.)
In 1892, Cleveland's second-best state--and his best state where Harrison was on the ballot--was South Carolina, as it had been in the prior three elections (and would be again, after a hiatus in 1896, in another ten straight elections). In fact, Cleveland's second-through-fourth-best states were South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi (fifth was Alabama, a ways behind Mississippi). His vote shares in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were all concentrated within a range of less than 1.5% (from 76.22% to 77.56%), whereas his vote share in Florida outstripped that in South Carolina by 7.45%.
1912
In 1912, Taft's highest vote share was in Utah, where he got 37.46%. Utah, of course, would be the Most Republican State again--but not until 1976, 64 years later. In the meantime, it would vote against narrowly-losing Republican nominees Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 and Thomas Dewey in 1948. 1916, of course, was the very next election after 1912, and Wilson not only flipped Utah but won it by over 20%--it was part of his 'fornia'. This, despite that Hughes actually slightly improved on Taft's vote share in the state.
This brings to light that when a nominee's vote share is that low in a state, it makes increasingly little sense to speak of a state being a nominee's 'best' state, because so much of the state's electorate is voting against the nominee in question. In all but four of the states listed above, the nominee in question got over 55.5% of the state's vote (the four exceptions being Scott in Kentucky in 1852, McGovern in Massachusetts in 1972, Mondale in Minnesota in 1984, and Dole in Utah in 1996). Even in those four cases, the nominee in question got an absolute majority of the state's vote except for Mondale in Minnesota; and Mondale got a 'near-majority' of > 48%. Taft not only fell short of a majority in Utah; he was defeated by his combined opposition in the state by better than 1.5:1. And Wilson's worst state in 1912 was Vermont, where he got 24.43% (as compared to 32.55% in Utah, which was only his seventh-worst state).
1992
Speaking of 1992, this was another highly multi-party contest. In a technical sense, Bill Clinton's best state was Arkansas, where he got 53.21%; and George H. W. Bush's was Mississippi, where he got 49.68%. Clinton got a majority in Arkansas, and Bush Sr got a 'near-majority' in Mississippi (albeit slightly short of Mondale's vote share in Minnesota in 1984). Furthermore, neither of these was an anomaly (except in the sense that the two party's best states seldom border one another); Mississippi had been the Most Republican State in 1964 and 1972; and Arkansas had been the Most Democratic State in 1844 and 1856. So what's the problem?
Well, while there are many cases where one party's best state is not quite the other party's worst state, usually the difference is small (including, by the way, in both 1980 and 1996). In 1992, the difference was dramatic. At 40.77%, Mississippi was only Clinton's 22nd-worst state; he did 16.12% better in it than in his worst state, Utah. (He also did better in Mississippi than in six states he carried: Nevada, Montana, Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Ohio. [Wilson, incidentally, also did better in Utah in 1912 than in one state he carried, Idaho; and Lincoln did better in New Jersey in 1860 than in two states he carried, California and Oregon.])
The difference between how Bush Sr did in Arkansas, and how he did in his worst state (Rhode Island), was not quite as dramatic. Arkansas was only his 15th-worst state, but the difference between his vote share in Arkansas and his vote share in Rhode Island was just 6.46%--sizeable, and greater than the 3.75% difference between Reagan's vote shares in Georgia and Rhode Island in 1980, or than the 1.27% difference between Dole's vote shares in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1996. But comparable to, and in fact a little smaller than, the 8.19% difference between Eisenhower's vote shares in Georgia (his opponent's best state) and Mississippi (his own worst state) in the two-party contest of 1956. And Bush Sr carried no states in which he got a lower vote share than he got in Arkansas.
However, Arkansas was a very unusual winner's best state in 1992. Clinton is the only winner from 1828 on (including the winners of elections such as 1856, 1860, 1912, and 1968) who fell short of 55.5% in his best state. Excluding 1992, these are the lowest winning percentages for a winning nominee in his best state:
Nixon, Nebraska, 1968 (59.82%)
Taylor, Rhode Island, 1848 (60.77%)
Clinton, Massachusetts, 1996 (61.47%)
Polk, Arkansas, 1844 (63.01%)
Kennedy, Rhode Island, 1960 (63.63%)
The first three all ran in multi-party contests. One might be struck by the fact that only one of these vote shares is even any less than 60% (although it was impressive enough to be noted by Robert David Sullivan), as well as by the ~ 1.5% gap between Polk's vote share in Arkansas and Clinton's in Massachusetts in 1996. However, if we include narrowly-losing nominees (i.e., nominees who lost by less than 4.5% in the national popular vote and by less than 23.63% in the Electoral College), we see a couple more < 60% vote shares (both in two-party contests), and the apparent gap between Polk in Arkansas and Clinton in Massachusetts in '96 vanishes:
Clay, Rhode Island, 1844 (59.55%)
Nixon, Nebraska, 1968 (59.82%)
W. H. Harrison, Vermont, 1836 (59.93%)
Taylor, Rhode Island, 1848 (60.77%)
Gore, Rhode Island, 2000 (60.99%)
Clinton, Massachusetts, 1996 (61.47%)
Dewey, Vermont, 1948 (61.54%)
Kerry, Massachusetts, 2004 (61.94%)
Nixon, Nebraska, 1960 (62.07%)
Hillary Clinton, Hawaii, 2016 (62.22%)
Hughes, Vermont, 1916 (62.43%)
Ford, Utah, 1976 (62.44%)
Polk, Arkansas, 1844 (63.01%)
Kennedy, Rhode Island, 1960 (63.63%)
Whether we take winners only, or winners as well as narrowly-losing nominees, Clinton's 53.21% vote share in Arkansas in 1992 is a severe outlier. Furthermore, with two exceptions (Rhode Island for Clay in 1844 and Vermont for Harrison in 1836), the best state of every winning or narrowly-losing nominee was a 'fornia' state for him or her. It would, by definition, be impossible for Arkansas in 1992 to have been a 'fornia' state for Clinton, as he did not get at least 55.5% (or at least 55%) of the vote in it. Even if the vote share requirement were removed from the definition of a 'fornia' state, however, Clinton's margin of victory in Arkansas was 'only' 17.73%. (Harrison's in Vermont in 1836, and Clay's in Rhode Island in 1844, were 19.86% and 19.97%, respectively.)
In any case, HW Bush's poor performance in Rhode Island was more indicative of contemporary trends, than was Clinton's strong performance in Arkansas; while Arkansas had been the Most Democratic State before, it had last been so in 1856, for James Buchanan (although it had been Carter's second-best state in 1976). Rhode Island, conversely, had been the Most Democratic State in the immediately preceding election, as well as in four of the last eight (and would be again in 2000). Clinton's poor performance in Utah was also, obviously, more indicative of contemporary trends than was HW Bush's (relatively) strong performance in Mississippi; Utah had been the Most Republican State in the last four consecutive elections, and would be again in the immediately following election, and in three of the following five.
2008
Oklahoma in 2008 is also worth mentioning in this vein. Oklahoma was McCain's best state in 2008, but it was not Obama's worst state; his worst state was Wyoming.
As mentioned above, this is not necessarily unusual. However, from 1964 on, the only elections in which this has happened have been 1968, 1980, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2016. Four of those elections--1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996--were multi-party contests (i.e., the two major-party nominees' combined vote was less than 94%, or indeed, less than 92%). Aside from those four, all of the last 15 elections have had a combined two-party vote that exceeded 98%, except 2000 (96.25%) and 2016 (94.27%). That leaves 2008 as an outlier. 2008 was not even the seventh-least two-party election out of the last 15; that was 1976, with a two-party vote of 98.10%. In addition, 2012 and 2020 had lower two-party votes than 2008 (whose two-party vote was 98.58%).
(This means, incidentally, that the fact that one of the two major party nominees' best state was not the other's worst state was, along with the one described here, another small idiosyncrasy 2000 shared with 2016. In other words, it was another way that 2016 was shown to be somewhat less two-party than the norm--but not in any respect that didn't also apply to 2000.)
Furthermore, 2008 is the only time Oklahoma has been the Most Republican State, and looks likely to remain so. Since 2008, Oklahoma has never been any higher than third in the list of states by Republican vote share, and the Republican vote share has always lagged at least 3% behind the Republican vote share in the Most Republican State. Likewise, in 2004, it was only the fifth-most Republican state, with Bush doing nearly six points worse in it than in Utah. Wyoming--Obama's worst state in '08--had, conversely, been the Most Republican State in 2000; and would be again in 2020.
Idiosyncrasies happen--2016 could remain the only instance of West Virginia's being the Most Republican State, and until 2020, 2000 was the only instance of Wyoming's having been the Most Republican State. Even discounting Florida in 1892 and New Jersey in 1860 (and the Whigs altogether, as having been too short-lived a party for this to be meaningful), there remain seven states that have been the best state for one or the other major parties only once: North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and West Virginia for the GOP in 1920, 1940, 2008, and 2016, respectively; and New Hampshire, Missouri, and Minnesota for the Democracy in 1836, 1840, and 1984, respectively. (For now, Vermont has also been the Most Democratic State only once, but it hasn't yet had a chance to replicate its feat.)
That said, that isn't that many idiosyncrasies. Two of the seven pertain to one single nominee, Martin van Buren, of whose position on slavery Southerners were 'suspicious'. Minnesota was Mondale's home state in 1984 (an election in the middle of a stretch of five consecutive elections, in four of which the Democrat's best state was his home state), and he won it with only a plurality. Furthermore, Wyoming (an idiosyncrasy until 2020) was consistently the second-Most Republican State in the four consecutive elections following the first election in which it was the Most Republican State. West Virginia, similarly, remained the second-Most Republican State in 2020. The Dakotas (which 'Mark27' distinguished from Kansas and Nebraska as being 'full of prairie populists' and having had, until 2000, 'a decent array of counties that leaned blue') have been more idiosyncratic, although North Dakota was Theodore Roosevelt's second-best state in 1904 and Eisenhower's second-best in 1952.
In contrast, Oklahoma has, aside from 2008, never been any more than the third-Most Republican State, either in the vicinity of its one turn as the Most Republican State (as mentioned above), or in the more distant past. (It had been the third-Most Republican State on two occasions before 2008: in 1960 and in 1972.)
One thing to note about Oklahoma is that, in 2008, it was the only state with literally no third-party (or write-in) vote.
In fact, this was true three elections in a row, in 2004, 2008, and
2012. This might also explain another way Oklahoma has been an
anomaly in recent elections: after the 2020 election, there are only three states
in which Romney holds the record for the highest Republican vote share
in the last six elections. Two of them--Massachusetts and Utah--are
fairly easily explained. The third is Oklahoma.
Now, Wyoming was a state in which Kerry did better than Gore; it was a state in a general region of the country which was perceived as broadly turning bluer ahead of, in, and after 2008; it was a state in which Kerry flipped a county in 2004 (and Obama improved significantly in that county), and in which Obama flipped another county in 2008. (Meanwhile, Obama carried no counties in Oklahoma in 2008, despite that Gore had carried nine in 2000.) Conversely, Oklahoma was in a part of the country that trended hard against Obama's candidacy specifically.
However, these facts about Wyoming would have indicated that Wyoming should not have returned as the Most Republican State after 2004 at all (or at least, not for the foreseeable future). Biden carried the same two counties in Wyoming as Obama did, and carried the one initially flipped by Kerry--Teton--substantially more strongly than Obama had in '08.
One explanation for Oklahoma's becoming the Most Republican State in only one election might be that, of the 'Scots-Irish zone' states (which are the five states where the margin swung more Republican in 2008, less Louisiana and plus Kentucky), it was the one with the least Democratic tradition as of 2008. All the others had voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and for Bill Clinton twice (as had Louisiana). West Virginia--the specific 'Scots-Irish zone' state that would become Trump's best in 2016--had, furthermore, voted to re-elect Carter in 1980, and for Dukakis in 1988. Oklahoma, conversely, had last voted Democratic in 1964.
Perhaps the shift of the GOP's centre of gravity towards the 'Scots-Irish zone' positioned Oklahoma to become the Most Republican State--but only briefly. In 2008, as Mark27 pointed out, there had been no 'cross currents in diversifying metro areas' that had 'cancel[led] out' even some of the GOP gains in Oklahoma; when this did happen, it would naturally favour a more rural Scots-Irish zone state (such as, say, West Virginia) displacing Oklahoma as the Most Republican State (and there were definitive signs of this in 2016, as Trump's vote share in Oklahoma County plummeted over 6% from Romney's, to a 24-year Republican low). At the same time, the other Scots-Irish zone states had not yet shed their residual Democratic loyalties to the degree to which Oklahoma had already long since done (even as Obama carried no counties in Oklahoma in 2008, he carried two in Tennessee, five in Kentucky, and seven in West Virginia that would never vote Democratic again; and of course, famously carried Elliott County, Kentucky even in 2012). The fact that the most rural Scots-Irish zone state (West Virginia) was also the one with the strongest residual Democratic tradition at the time only made it more likely that Oklahoma would have a brief and ultimately idiosyncratic turn as the Most Republican State.
This explanation might seem compelling, except that the title of Most Republican State didn't stay in West Virginia in 2016--it moved back out of the 'Scots-Irish zone' altogether, back to a state that had swung Democratic not only in 2008 but also in 2004, Wyoming.
Another explanation might be that a third party performed idiosyncratically well in Wyoming in 2008. Before 1964, there were six elections with a two-party vote over 98%, in which one nominee's worst state was not the other's best: 1840, 1876, 1940, 1944, 1956, and 1960. (In all of these save 1876, the two-party vote was over 99%.) Most of these cases arguably had to do with strongly sectional interests. In 1944, 1956, and 1960, it likely had to do with slates of unpledged electors that played upon concerns very specific to the South, and which had no appeal--nor were meant to--beyond the South (or even beyond a specific one or few states in the South). As for 1840, in the Second Party System in general, minor anti-slavery parties, which obviously generally drew all or practically all of their support from outside the South, seemed to play a role in making Southern states less likely to be major parties' worst states. In 1840 and 1852, Vermont was the least Democratic state, despite a Southern state (Kentucky) being the Most Whig State; and in 1844 and 1848, New Hampshire was the least Whig state, despite a Southern state (Arkansas in 1844, Texas in 1848) being the Most Democratic state. In general, the disappearance of strongly sectional interests seems to have coincided with each party's best state being the other party's worst on a fairly consistent basis when the two-party vote exceeds 98%.
However, in 1876 and 1940, the mismatch seemed to have to do with a minor party doing bizarrely well in a specific state (both relative to how it was doing nationally, and relative to how it was doing in any other, or almost any other, state), despite there being no obvious reason for this. In 1876, the Greenback Party nominee Peter Cooper got 6.26% of the vote in Kansas; this was over 6.32 times his national vote share, and over 1.59 times his vote share in any other state. In 1940, the Prohibition Party nominee, Roger Babson, got 0.47% of the vote in Kansas, which was over 3.9 times his national vote share. While Kansas was not Babson's best state (that was Arizona, where he got 0.49%), Babson's vote share in Kansas was still over 1.27 times his vote share in any other state save Arizona.
Well, in 2008, Ralph Nader (independent), Bob Barr (Libertarian), and
Chuck Baldwin (Constitution) all did do better in Wyoming than they did
nationally. But, for one thing, it wasn't a particularly superlative
state for any of them. (It was Barr's and Baldwin's fifth-best state.)
For another, neither Nader nor Barr so much as even doubled his national
vote share in Wyoming.
And anyway, in 2020, when Wyoming reclaimed its title as the Most Republican State, third parties were back on Oklahoma's ballot. And if anything, it was Wyoming that saw an idiosyncratically strong performance by a minor candidate: Brock Pierce got over 25 times his national vote share in Wyoming (which, statewide, amounted to a respectable 0.80%). Pierce also did better in Oklahoma than he did nationally, but in Oklahoma, he 'only' slightly more than quintupled his national vote share. (In addition, the principal minor candidate nationally in 2020, Jo Jorgensen, did just shy of 0.5% better in Wyoming than in Oklahoma. Howie Hawkins was not on the ballot in either state.)
Of course, one could also point out that Kanye West slightly more than octupled his national vote share in Oklahoma (amounting to a statewide 0.36%), whereas West was not on the ballot in Wyoming. This is both a less severe amplification than in the case of Pierce in Wyoming, and a substantially smaller statewide vote share than for Pierce in Wyoming. (And, 0.63% of Wyoming's vote were write-ins, which may--or may not--have disproportionately been for West.)
In any case, even if we imagined that every single third-party vote cast in Oklahoma in 2020 went to Trump instead--in other words, if we imagined that Oklahoma allowed only votes for the two major nominees, as in 2004, 2008, and 2012, and if we made the implausible assumption that everyone who actually voted for a third party, would have voted for Trump under those circumstances--that would still not even make Oklahoma Trump's second-best state, let alone his best. (And, after all, such conditions did obtain in 2012, and this did not make Oklahoma even Romney's second-best state; Romney's vote share in Wyoming outpaced his vote share in Oklahoma by 1.87%.)Observations
From 1880 through 1936, with two exceptions (1892 and 1896, the former already discussed above), the Most Democratic State was South Carolina. Nine distinct Democratic nominees had South Carolina as their best state at least once: Winfield Scott Hancock, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Alton Parker, Woodrow Wilson, James Cox, John Davis, Al Smith, and Franklin Roosevelt. This included every Democratic nominee from Hancock through Roosevelt.
From 1960 through 2000, Rhode Island was the Most Democratic State in five of eleven elections--a plurality, if not a majority. Five distinct Democratic nominees had Rhode Island as their best state at least once: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore.
Aside from South Carolina and Rhode Island, the only state that has been the Most Democratic State so much as thrice in a row is Hawaii (2008, 2012, and 2016).
From 1856 through 1916, Vermont was the Most Republican State in every election save 1964 and, with the above caveat, 1912. From 1920 through 1956, it was the Most Republican State in six of ten elections, with no other state being the Most Republican State in any more than two elections out of that period. Vermont was the best state at least once for sixteen separate Republican nominees: Frémont, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Blaine, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Hughes, Coolidge, Hoover, Landon, Dewey, and Eisenhower. This included every Republican nominee from Frémont through Eisenhower save Harding and Willkie.
From 1976 through 2012, Utah was the Most Republican State in seven of ten elections, and in four straight elections from 1976 through 1988 (the only time a state other than Vermont or South Carolina has been a party's best state for more than three elections in a row). It was the Most Republican State for six distinct Republican nominees at least once: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney. This was every Republican nominee from Ford through Romney save McCain.
The largest number of distinct nominees of a single party that a state has served as the best state for is 16 (Vermont, for the Republican Party), followed by nine (South Carolina, for the Democratic Party), six (Utah, for the Republican Party), and five (Rhode Island, for the Democratic Party). If Breckinridge is counted as the Democratic nominee in 1860, Texas was also five separate Democratic nominees' best state (although the candidacy of one of those five--Truman's--came 76 years later than any of the others). Vermont, Utah, South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii are the only states that have been a party's best state so much as thrice in a row.
Interestingly, it can be said that every two-term Republican president, with one exception, has had Vermont or Utah as his best state at least once: Vermont was Lincoln's, Grant's, McKinley's, and Eisenhower's best state at least once; and Utah was Reagan's and George W. Bush's best state at least once. (TR was, strictly speaking, not a two-term president, but he is such a noteworthy figure in the history of the party that it's worth noting Vermont was also his best state in 1904--as it was the best state for Reagan's hero, Calvin Coolidge, in 1924.)
Nothing of the like can--yet--be meaningfully said of the Democracy. Three two-term Democratic presidents had South Carolina as their best state at least once (Cleveland, Wilson, and FDR). (We are excluding Jackson because his two elections had some odd state results, whose oddity did not come close to being replicated in any subsequent election for decades--or, in the case of his handful of 100%'s in 1832, ever.) Since FDR, there have been only two two-term Democratic presidents: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Right now, we could say that every two-term Democratic president, with one exception, has had either South Carolina or Hawaii as his best state. But there's only one who has had Hawaii as his best state. (We could also say that every two-term Democratic president, with one exception, has had either South Carolina or Massachusetts [or even Arkansas] as his best state at least once.)
When Hawaii was the Most Democratic State a third time in a row in 2016, with a different nominee heading the ticket, I thought perhaps that the title of Most Democratic State had found a consistent new home, and that it would likely only be a matter of time before it could meaningfully be said that every two-term Democratic president, with one exception, had had either South Carolina or Hawaii as his or her best state at least once. But in 2020, Biden's best state was Vermont. And, if he runs for, and wins, re-election, it actually seems more likely that Massachusetts will be his best state, than that Hawaii will; in 2020, he got 65.60% in Massachusetts (less than half a percent behind his vote share in Vermont), whereas he got 63.73% in Hawaii. (On the other hand, Hawaii has a well-known wont for trending towards incumbents--although, if that keeps up, that in and of itself could prevent Hawaii becoming a truly consistent Most Democratic State.)
Originally, it seemed that the migration of the title of Most Republican State to West Virginia in 2016 was an indication of the innovativeness of Trump's candidacy. Trump joined a handful of nominees to become the first nominee of their party for whom a particular state was the best state, who are disproportionately (although not entirely) innovative figures:
William Jennings Bryan, 1896: first Democrat for whom Mississippi was the Most Democratic State
Warren Harding, 1920: first Republican for whom North Dakota was the Most Republican State
Wendell Willkie, 1940: first Republican for whom South Dakota was the Most Republican State
John Kennedy, 1960: first Democrat for whom Rhode Island was the Most Democratic State
Richard Nixon, 1960: first Republican for whom Nebraska was the Most Republican State
Barry Goldwater, 1964: first Republican for whom Mississippi was the Most Republican State
George McGovern, 1972: first Democrat for whom Massachusetts was the Most Democratic State
Gerald Ford, 1976: first Republican for whom Utah was the Most Republican State.
Walter Mondale, 1984: first Democrat for whom Minnesota was the Most Democratic State.
George W. Bush, 2000: first Republican for whom Wyoming was the Most Repul=blican State
Barack Obama, 2008: first Democrat for whom Hawaii was the Most Democratic State
John McCain, 2008: first Republican for whom Oklahoma was the Most Repubican State
Donald Trump, 2016: first Republican for whom West Virginia was the Most Republican State
Joe Biden, 2020: first Democrat for whom Vermont was the Most Democratic State
Biden and McCain were not very innovative, but they were arguably benefiting from 'negative innovations' on the part of the other major party nominee (i.e., the other major party nominee driving certain regions away). 1984 is the only two-party election in which one of the two major nominees won only a plurality in his best state (and, if Arkansas is counted as Clinton's best state in 1992, the Democrats' best state in all but one of the elections from 1976-1992 was the nominee's home state).
Ford was certainly not innovative, and I'm not sure why it was with Ford specifically that Utah became the Most Republican State for the first time. From what Steven P. Miller wrote in 2014, one would have expected Reagan (certainly an innovative candidate) to be the first Republican for whom Utah was his best state:
If 1976 was the Year of the Evangelical, then 1980 was the Year of the Evangelical Right...What would become known as the "Christian Right," or the "religious right," had largely coalesced by the end of the 1970s, but the presidential race of 1980 thrust it further into the national spotlight...For the next three decades, the Christian Right--a movement propelled by evangelicals but also containing sympathetic Catholics, Mormons, and a handful of Jewish allies--occupied a distinct place in the imaginations of many Americans.
Alternatively, if some other phenomenon had already thrust Utah to (or near) the forefront of Republican politics before 1976, one might have expected this nominee to have been Nixon, in one of his three elections. Utah had already become consistently decidedly more Republican than the country before 1976. On the day before Halloween, 1964, Time correspondents (forecasting how each state would vote) wrote, somewhat cryptically, in the entry for Utah, 'The morality issue could move some Mormons back to Barry, but Johnson is in front.' I'm not sure what 'the morality issue' would have been (and, to be fair, they were doing all 50 states), but Utah finished as Goldwater's 11th-best state (and one of only 12 in which he stayed above 45%).
In 1960 and 1968, Nixon's best state was Nebraska, a typically Republican state (and, before 1960, the only free-soil Haga stack state never to have been the Most Republican State). In 1972, however, it was Mississippi, which had been his own worst state in both 1968 and 1960. Even after 1972, it seems unlikely anyone would have spoken in terms of the prior ten or so years having been a period when the title of Most Republican State 'stopped in Mississippi'. If Utah was close to being Nixon's best state in 1972, that might be meaningful.
Nixon's six best states in 1972 were in the South. Five of these six would go on to vote for Carter in 1976 (the exception being Oklahoma, where Ford would win a plurality), and three of them had voted for Wallace in 1968. However, Nixon's best state after these six was...Nebraska. Between Nebraska and #14 Utah stood an additional four Southern states, another Mountain West state (and future Most Republican State) (Wyoming), and Nebraska's neighbour (and the state that had been the Most Republican State, at that time, the second-most times after Vermont), Kansas.
The only hint of a more special status being in store for Utah might have been John Schmitz's outstanding performance in the state. He got 5.97% in it, making it his third-best state (after Idaho and Alaska). In general, I am loath to even casually combine two nominees' vote shares for speculative purposes, but Utah was the fifth-best state for the combined Nixon-Schmitz vote--and every state with a greater combined Nixon-Schmitz vote was in the South (Mississippi, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama). Now, Schmitz appears not to have been on the ballot in Nebraska; but he was in Kansas, and Kansas is only the 13th-best state for the combined Nixon-Schmitz vote. (In fact, the combined Nixon-Schmitz vote was lower, percentage-wise, in Kansas than in Nebraska, despite that Schmitz was not on the ballot in Nebraska--and despite that Schmitz did do better in Kansas than he did nationally.) In order for the combined Nixon-Schmitz vote share in Nebraska to have been higher than the combined Nixon-Schmitz vote share in Utah, Schmitz would have had to have gotten at least ~ 3.11% of the vote in Nebraska. There seems scant indication this would have been the case (although, of course, one never knows). Every state in which Schmitz got over 3% of the vote was either in the Mountain West or the South. The only further states in which he got over 2.5% were California (his home state, and a state with many interior rural areas similar to the Mountain West--his best county was Tehama), Wisconsin (...Joseph McCarthy's home state?), and Tennessee (a Southern state). In the two free-soil Haga stack states in which he was on the ballot, Kansas and North Dakota, Schmitz got 2.38% and 2.01%, respectively. (In Oklahoma, he got 2.30%.)
One final possibility that occurs to me is connected to 2000--the first two-party contest since 1972 in which Utah was not the Most Republican State. 1976 (the first election in which Utah was the Most Republican State) and 2000 (the first two-party contest, since Utah had first become the Most Republican State, in which Utah was not the Most Republican State) had in common that they were also the first and second elections, since the candidacies of William Jennings Bryan, that a major party nominated a 'self-proclaimed evangelical' for president.
In 2012, Mitt Romney had an 'evangelical problem' in the Republican primaries, although this didn't seem to bleed over into the general election. The evangelical-Mormon alliance mentioned above, which made Utah the Most Republican state on a consistent basis even as the party became more and more Southernised, may obscure, to those not familiar, the animus that has been held by some evangelical authorities vis-à-vis Mormonism up until the recent past, as described by Amy Sullivan in 2005
...Just as it is hard to overestimate the importance of evangelicalism in the modern Republican Party, it is nearly impossible to overemphasize the problem evangelicals have with Mormonism. Evangelicals don’t have the same vague anti-LDS prejudice that some Americans do. For them it’s a doctrinal thing, based on very specific theological disputes that can’t be overcome by personality or charm or even shared positions on social issues. Romney’s journalistic boosters either don’t understand these doctrinal issues or try to sidestep them. But ignoring them won’t make them go away. To evangelicals, Mormonism isn’t just another religion. It’s a cult.
...In 2004, Mormons were specifically excluded from participation in the National Day of Prayer organized by Shirley Dobson (wife of James Dobson, leader of the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family) because their theology was found to be incompatible with Christian beliefs.
Southern Baptists have been particularly vocal about labeling the LDS Church a “cult.” In 1997, the denomination published a handbook and video, both with the title The Mormon Puzzle: Understanding and Witnessing to Latter-day Saints. More than 45,000 of these kits were distributed in the first year; the following year–in a throwing down of the proselytizing gauntlet–the Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting in Salt Lake City. Around the same time, a speaker at the denomination’s summit on Mormonism declared that Utah was “a stronghold of Satan.” When Richard Mouw, president of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, tried to repair relations with the LDS community by apologizing on behalf of evangelicals during a speech in the Mormon Tabernacle last year, his conservative brethren lashed out. Mouw had no right, they declared in an open letter, to speak for them or apologize for denouncing Mormon “false prophecies and false teachings.”
Beginning in the mid-1970s, white evangelicals courted white Mormons as they built the electoral infrastructure that became the religious right. As historian Neil J. Young has documented in his book, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics, this outreach came in spite of Mormon beliefs, not because of them. Jerry Falwell Sr. and others did not stand up for Latter-day Saints who were roundly mocked by evangelicals in the press and on television—so long as those making light of Mormonism did not risk votes.
...
The same held true of Romney’s 2012 campaign. Robert Jeffress, a megachurch pastor and now a stalwart champion of Donald Trump, rejected Romney, saying that he belonged to a cult. In contrast, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association took Mormonism off its list of cults in October 2012 after the evangelist met with the presidential candidate; indeed, the list of cults was scrubbed from the organization’s website entirely. In doing so, Graham—or at least his team—did not signal an acceptance of Mormonism so much as the view that political alignment was more important than theology in presidential elections.
Of course, what I am proposing is that Carter and Bush might have had a--slight--'Mormon problem', as opposed to a Mormon nominee or candidate having an 'evangelical problem'. Such might be easy to imagine given the overtness of some of the evangelical hostility to Mormonism as described above. It's also hard to tell whether this was at play or not, because the question of why Utah became the Most Republican State specifically in 1976 (or stopped--at least temporarily--specifically in 2000) seems to be of relatively little interest. (And, it's important to emphasise, insofar as either Carter or Bush might have had a slight 'Mormon problem', it was indeed very slight. Utah had already become a highly Republican state by 1976, and Bush still did extremely well in the state in 2000--getting over 2/3 of its vote, and doing better in it than his father had done in 1988.) §
Utah is a particularly interesting question because it is one of only two or three states that has become a consistent or somewhat consistent best state for one of the two major parties in the 20th or 21st centuries (along with Rhode Island and, perhaps, Hawaii)--and of the three, it has, at least so far, been the most consistent.
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The fact that West Virginia did not remain Trump's best state in 2020 doesn't necessarily mean that his candidacy wasn't innovative. North Dakota being Harding's best state in 1920 has remained a one-off. After 1896, Mississippi wouldn't be the Most Democratic State again until 1940, and then would be only twice more (that is, in 1940 itself, and in 1944). Both of these shifts, however, accompanied a dramatic shift in national politics, probably not coincidentally.
After 2000, as mentioned above, Wyoming did stay consistently the second-Most Republican State in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 (which, among other things, means it has consistently stayed ahead of Idaho in every election from 2000 on). But Wyoming becoming Trump's best state in 2020 particularly strikingly underscores the enduring power of whatever moved so many Wyomingites to surge to Bush in 2000, causing their state to overtake Utah and Idaho.
At the same time, it also already makes Trump less of an outlier amongst Republican presidents than he would have been if his best state had remained West Virginia. If he does win another term in 2024, one will be able to meaningfully say that every two-term Republican president (with one exception--Nixon) will have had one of three states as his best state at least once: Vermont, Utah, and Wyoming. ('Meaningfully', again, because there would be more than one two-term Republican president to have had each of these states as his best state at least once.)
Why Wyoming has become (or might have become) a durable Most Republican State is not as clear as in the case of Vermont or Utah (or Nebraska, insofar as it had a period of ascendancy). Wyoming's ascendancy (if that is what it is) comes at a time when the Mountain West as a whole is becoming less Republican; as Mark27 noted in 2015, 'coal-heavy Wyoming is the only Western state that has gotten progressively more Republican in the past generation'.
It is not, after all, as though Wyoming has been insulated from the trends that have contributed to the Mountain West trending Democratic as a whole. Like most Mountain West states (but unlike West Virginia--or, for that matter, Oklahoma), it has a rapidly bluening 'ski resort and mountain nirvana'--Teton
County, where Biden got over 2/3 of the vote (and which cast 5.30% of
Wyoming's total vote, well in excess of the ~ 2% threshold John King set
for 'significance'). It is, in fact, rare for a nominee to carry any county in the opposition party's best state with such a high vote share, let alone one that represents such a large share of the state's vote. Not counting Mississippi in 1992, the last time either nominee got any more than 60% of the vote in any county in his or her opponent's best state was 1988, when Dukakis got 64.18% in Carbon County, Utah (which cast 1.33% of the state's vote that year). Furthermore, not only does Teton County cast a large proportion of Wyoming's vote, but it was, as of 2015, the fastest-growing county in Wyoming.
It is relatively easy to explain the status of most of the states that have been the Most Republican or Most Democratic State on a relatively sustained basis: Vermont ('the one state with a homogeneous, rural, Yankee culture almost undisturbed since the early nineteenth century', as Bill Schneider noted in 1978), South Carolina (the 'home of secession'), Utah. Nebraska (which Robert David Sullivan described as having been the Most Republican State during an 'era', even though it was only two times) was, as a forum poster notes, 'settled by Methodists from New England and the Midwest'; and, as Chris Matthews noted in 2004, was, along with Kansas, one of the most historically Republican states 'going back to the Civil War days'.
Massachusetts has been the Most Democratic State only thrice, but it is perhaps more iconically representative of the post-Solid South Democracy than any other state (for reasons described, for example, by Thomas Frank, here). (As for Rhode Island--which was the Most Democratic State in five of eleven elections from 1960 through 2000, and first became the Most Democratic State with Kennedy--it is apparently the only majority Catholic state, and hence rounds out, with South Carolina, Samuel Burchard's notorious characterisation of the Democracy on the eve of the 1884 election.)
As for the state Obama made (albeit possibly only briefly) the Most Democratic State, as Sarah Miller Davenport explains, 'Hawaii would become the first state with a majority of people of Asian descent. Many had been ineligible for U.S. citizenship only a few years earlier, before the end of racial restrictions to naturalization.' 'The base of opposition to [Hawaii] statehood in Congress,' she later specifies, 'was Southern Democrats.' Hawaii first became the Most Democratic State in 2008, the first time, arguably, a Democrat won with a 'forget-the-South' strategy (and, at any rate, the first time a Democrat won 'without winning four or five Southern states', at least insofar as John Edwards and his audience likely understood 'the South' in 2004).
As for Vermont as--if it sticks--the Most Democratic State, as Bill Schneider wrote in 1978, 'It is not unfair to characterize Yankee culture as profoundly anti-Southern in its moral and political outlook; Yankees were anti-Southern in the Civil War period, and their anti-Southern bias was revived in the recent era of civil rights.' Already, at the time, he was describing Vermont as 'the most liberal state' in the Northeast (a description casually reprised by Jeff Greenfield in 2004, an election in which the Democracy--having nominated its first serious 'forget-the-South' contender--would see its vote share rise in Vermont more than in any other state). (Schneider's analysis, incidentally, indicates that attributing Vermont's shift to flatlanders, as Micah Cohen does here, is at best an over-emphasis of a relatively secondary factor. Cohen describes Rutland County as one of the state's 'Republican-leaning areas'; although it was very close in 2000 and somewhat close in 2016, Rutland County has voted Democratic in eight straight elections. Cohen describes the Northeast Kingdom as 'the most consistently conservative part of the state'; its two larger counties, Caledonia and Orleans, have both voted Democratic in five straight elections. To illustrate his point, Cohen points out that Essex [the third, and smallest, NEK county] was 'the only county Mr. Obama won in 2008 by less than 20 percentage points'--but voting for Obama by less than 20% is hardly a resounding demonstration of conservatism. A more recent analysis could point to its two outright votes for Trump, but even Trump topped out at a not-terribly-impressive 53.9% in the county.)
And finally, there would have been a relatively straightforward explanation for West Virginia--the most rural of the 'Scots-Irish zone' states (one that could possibly be described as a Scots-Irish analogue to Vermont).
In his 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips divides the Mountain West into two categories, and places Wyoming in a separate one from Utah and Idaho. Wyoming, along with Colorado and Montana, is a 'Mountain-Plains state', with 'wheat and cattle', 'Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish', 'agrarian, mine, mill, and smelter radicals'. Utah and Idaho (and Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona)--the 'interior plateau states'--by contrast, are marked by 'booming resorts and retirement towns', by 'Mormons, Mexicans, Navajos, Apaches, and Southern Democratic traditionalists' (p. 458).
Obviously, the two Mountain West states that had led the way in the region's growing Republicanism in the 1970s-1990s were both in the latter group (Utah and Idaho). Phillips does give some hints as to why the former group might eventually become more (or as) Republican. On p. 465, he writes that 'Northeastern causes are suspect, whether liberal or conservative' in 'the old radical Mountain West states.' As if in confirmation, on p. 470, he describes Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado as '[having gone] Republican [in 1968] with the same intensity that motivated Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.'
But even as Wyoming has risen to the position of Most Republican State, its fellow 'Plains-Mountain' (and fellow 'all-white and small-city') state, Montana, has remained decidedly less Republican, not only than Wyoming, but than Idaho (and even--once McMullin left the scene--than Utah). Indeed, it appears to have become permanently less Republican than it was in the Bush years--in their three elections, neither Romney nor Trump was able to come within 1.5% of the lower of Bush's two performances in the state.
Similarly, Kansas and Nebraska--two of the free-soil Plains states that Phillips describes Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana as having voted in sympathy with in 1968--seem to also have become permanently less Republican than in the Bush years. In Nebraska, neither Romney nor Trump has been able to come within 2% of the lower of Bush's two performances (and Trump, in particular, has not been able to come within 3.5% thereof). Romney actually managed to slightly outdo Bush's 2000 performance (although not his 2004 performance) in Kansas, but Trump remained well over 1% lower than Bush in '00 in the state in both of his elections. When Robert David Sullivan wrote that 'in the Democrats' wildest dreams, the GOP will nominate someone so far to the right that it will finally alienate [Nebraska]' in 2011, it seems Trump was the closest the Republicans could get.
Now, the Dakotas, in contrast, seem to have become permanently more Republican, perhaps because of the distinction Mark27 made between them, on the one hand, and Nebraska and Kansas, on the other (the Dakotas being 'full of prairie populists' who 'moved towards Bush in 2000'). North Dakota, in particular, was Trump's fourth-best state in both 2016 and 2020 (neither Dakota had ever been any more than the fifth-most Republican state, which North Dakota was in 2000, in the preceding four elections). But this still means that North Dakota has (unlike Wyoming) remained unable to overtake Oklahoma in its Republicanism (despite being very comparable to Wyoming in terms of amount of vote cast--in 2020, North Dakota cast about 131% the vote that Wyoming cast). South Dakota (which cast about 153% the vote that Wyoming cast in 2020) has, in addition, remained less Republican than Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Alabama, the latter three all states whose one or two largest counties voted over 55% for Biden. (And of course, neither Dakota has a 'ski resort/mountain nirvana'; they do both have solidly blue, majority-Amerindian enclaves, but, for example, North Dakota's two blue counties, Rolette and Sioux, combined cast just 1.38% of the state's total vote in 2020.)
An election-eve article from 2012 might contain a possible answer. Intriguingly, Willow Belden reported, in this article, that '[M]ost agree that Wyoming will continue to be a red state. But just how red isn’t clear.' This certainly doesn't paint a picture of a state that would go on to become the Most Republican State just eight years later. But there are two main reasons she points to for why it was 'unclear' 'just how red' Wyoming would continue to be. One of them, according to one of her interviewees, was
You know, a lot of people talk about the need for economic diversification, and I think if we did have that economic diversification, we’d have different industries and different businesses here. And those would bring in different folks that might have a different political viewpoint than others.
If we take, say, the two largest counties in every state that we might have expected to move in tandem with Wyoming, and look at how they voted in 2004 and 2020, we get this (bolded red figures are when the county's Republican percentage outstripped the statewide Republican percentage; bolded blue figures are when the Democrat won the county):
Idaho
Ada
2004 (25.76% of state total): 61.37%-37.95%
2020 (29.92%): 50.33%-46.41%
Canyon
2004 (9.25%): 75.14%-24.23%
2020 (10.42%): 68.27%-28.61%
Kansas
Johnson
2004 (21.16%): 61.16%-37.80%
2020 (25.46%): 44.54%-52.74%
Sedgwick
2004 (13.63%): 62.46%-36.21%
2020 (16.39%): 54.44%-42.64%
Montana
Yellowstone
2004 (14.70%): 61.70%-36.39%
2020 (13.89%): 60.57%-36.60%
Missoula
2004 (11.04%): 45.66%-51.47%
2020 (11.84%): 36.85%-60.64%
Nebraska
Douglas
2004 (26.61%): 58.34%-40.24%
2020 (28.92%): 43.09%-54.37%
Lancaster
2004 (15.99990%): 56.03%-42.36%
2020 (16.44%): 44.58%-52.34%
North Dakota
Cass
2004 (21.32%): 59.39%-38.99%
2020 (23.78%): 49.53%-46.84%
Burleigh
2004 (12.41%): 68.47%-29.94%
2020 (14.03%): 68.46%-28.27%
South Dakota
Minnehaha
2004 (19.997%): 56.92%-41.62%
2020 (21.85%): 53.34%-43.85%
Pennington
2004 (11.58%): 66.661%-31.61%
2020 (13.61%): 60.96%-35.83%
Wyoming
Laramie
2004 (16.43%): 65.19%-33.09%
2020 (16.25%): 62.00%-33.83%
Natrona
2004 (13.18%): 67.34%-30.85%
2020 (12.72%): 71.79%-24.23%
Even in 2004, most of these counties were pulling the Republican statewide percentage down--only Canyon, ID, Sedgwick, KS, Yellowstone, MT, Burleigh, ND, and Pennington, SD were actually pulling the statewide percentage up. Almost as many were doing so in 2020: Canyon, ID, Yellowstone, MT, Burleigh, ND, and Natrona, WY.
(Yellowstone is a particularly interesting example, because not only is it rare in being a largest county in its state that is powerfully red, but, if it were not so, it would seem that, as rural as it is, Montana's redness might actually be somewhat imperilled, in a similar way as, say, Alaska's is. Montana only barely gave a landslide to Trump in either 2016 [56.17%] or 2020 [56.92%]; and its second-largest county is not only blue, but, unlike any of the two largest counties in any of these other states, a landslide blue county. So if Yellowstone itself were not an outlier in being a largest county in its state that is powerfully red, Montana itself might be an outlier in terms of being a largely rural, white state that is nevertheless not a landslide red state.)
But, nearly across the board, Trump did much worse in these counties in 2020 than Bush did in 2004. Bush got over 60% in nine of the 14 counties; Trump did so in only six. Bush outright lost only one (Missoula); Trump lost five. In Idaho, Kansas, and Wyoming, Bush won both of the biggest counties with over 60%; Trump did so only in Wyoming. In only one of all 14 counties (Natrona) did Trump do better in 2020 than Bush did in 2004 (although in Yellowstone and Burleigh, he did only marginally worse).
What this might indicate is that the 'economic diversification' that Belden's interviewee foresaw did indeed come to the major metro areas (relatively speaking) of these other states, but not, for whatever reason, to Wyoming. It is, after all, not as though Wyoming is the only state whose economy is heavily based on primary resource extraction. So is the Scots-Irish zone state of West Virginia's; so is the Plains West state of North Dakota (which apparently even was 'attract[ing] Wyoming energy workers' as of 2015). But Wyoming appears unusual in that its principal population centres' economies appear to be based on primary resource extraction (or, at least, they vote as if this were the case), whereas this is not true of the largest counties (or at least of both of the largest counties) in any of these other states.
Even in West Virginia--which might seem the natural new reliable 'Most Republican State' as the centre of gravity of the GOP moves into the 'Scots-Irish zone'--the second-largest county in the state, Berkeley's, economy appears to have more to do with its proximity to the Washington, DC area than with primary resource extraction. Berkeley is actually a strongly Republican county (more strongly Republican than Laramie), having voted 64.58% for Trump in 2020--but this represented a decline of 0.5% from Trump's 2016 vote share in the county. (In Laramie County, Trump improved his vote share by 1.3%.)
Which leads to another possibility. In November 2012 (after the election), Josh Kron wrote that 'This map of emerging "megaregions" in the U.S. matches up snugly with the blue spots on the electoral map.' It may end up, relatively mundanely, that a greater degree of insulation from 'megaregions' might be a key factor in determining a state's relative degree of Republicanism. That is probably not the whole explanation--on the attached map, Wyoming actually appears, of the Mountain West/Plains states whose two largest counties are detailed above, the least insulated from the 'megaregions', with the main body of the 'Front Range' megaregion extending into Laramie County. (On the other hand, it's a little unclear exactly how to read the map, and there are no circles in Wyoming; circles, which are sometimes separated from the main body of the megaregion they are associated with, appear to indicate particularly important foci, and there is a circle prominently indicating Boise, a large circle half in Kansas and a smaller circle entirely in Kansas, and two grey circles--meaning, presumably, they aren't considered part of any 'megaregion'--in Nebraska.) As for West Virginia--Wyoming's principal rival for the position of Most Republican State--it might simply not be sufficiently insulated from the BosWash megaregion for it to sustain such a position.
The future of the Most Democratic and Most Republican States
Ahead of the 2020 election, I made the prediction that the Most Republican State would be Wyoming and the Most Democratic State would be Maryland. Neither struck me as the most elegant eventuality, but they struck me as most likely.
In the Republican case, there were really only two states to consider: Wyoming and West Virginia. The most elegant thing, to my mind, would have been for West Virginia to once again be Trump's best state. But the difference between how much better Hillary Clinton did in West Virginia than she did in Wyoming (4.55%), and how much better Donald Trump did in West Virginia than he did in Wyoming (0.33%), seemed to make it very unlikely that West Virginia would remain Trump's best state. Still, it wasn't totally implausible--if, for example, Trump dramatically increased his vote share in West Virginia (as Bush did across the Scots-Irish zone in 2004, and as Trump did in 2016)--which he did not. Also, the fact that Wyoming had swung toward Kerry in 2004 also gave me pause about predicting Wyoming, because in general, how states or counties trended in 2004 have tended to predict their long-term trajectories since then. But it turns out Wyoming was correct.
In the Democratic case, there were five states to consider, to my mind: Hawaii, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland (with an honorary mention of Rhode Island--one would have hardly needed address Utah on the Republican side).
With respect to California, I concluded that, as close as it had come in 2016, California was too large to be uniformly idiosyncratic in the way that is usually necessary to be a party's best state. Most of the time, the parties' best states tend to be small, and occasionally medium-sized. Truman's best state being Texas in 1948 was truly outlierly. From 1960 on, the Most Democratic State has always been either a 3- or 4-EV state except in 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, and 2004. In 1972, 1996, and 2004, it was Massachusetts; in 1976 and 1980, it was Georgia. In 1992, if one counts it, it was 6-EV Arkansas. In 1984, it was Minnesota (in which Mondale won a plurality). In the same timeframe (1960 having been the first election in which a specific state was the Most Republican State as well as the Most Democratic State), the Most Republican State has never had more than seven electoral votes (whether one counts Mississippi in 1992 or not). In its entire history as a party, the Most Republican State has never had more than 10 electoral votes (Kansas, in 1928).
Hawaii--the state it would have been most elegant if it had been Biden's best state--has the aforementioned well-known tendency to trend toward incumbent presidents. Of course, there's always a first time. But the Democratic vote share in Hawaii also dropped rather precipitously between 2012 and 2016, by 8.33%. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton declined only slightly in Maryland and Massachusetts, and actually improved slightly on Obama's vote share in California.
She declined precipitously in Vermont, but Trump also underperformed Romney in Vermont. So, even though Vermont was only Hillary Clinton's sixth-best state (behind New York), it was still worth considering, especially given that it had been Obama's second-best state in 2008 and 2012 (after never having been a top-two Democratic state before 2008, and never having been a top-three [or indeed top-eight] Democratic state before 2004).
On the one hand, I was influenced by Maine's surprisingly sudden shift to being a purple state (at least temporarily). (And, at the same time, New Hampshire remained a purple state). It didn't seem plausible that Vermont would remain completely insulated from the trends affecting these states, with at least one of which Vermont has been closely politically aligned since the end of the Second Party System. Within Vermont, not only did Trump carry a county (Essex), but it was what Phillip Reese would have called a 'Trump country county'--Trump carried it by at least 10%, and he did better in it than Romney did. Indeed, neither Romney nor McCain carried any counties in Vermont when Vermont had been the second-most Democratic state. (And Essex is small, but in the context of Vermont, it cast 0.91% of the state's total vote.) Furthermore, Hillary Clinton barely carried Orleans County, and carried Rutland and Franklin Counties relatively narrowly. Rutland, once the state's second-largest (in fact, long ago, its largest) county, cast 9.24% of Vermont's total vote in 2016. To varying degrees, these were counties I would have been expecting Trump to flip if he were even coming close to winning re-election; and it was difficult to see how Trump carrying four counties (all of which save Essex cast at least 3.75% of Vermont's vote in 2016) would be accompanied by its rising to the position of Most Democratic State.
I figured Vermont's being Obama's second-best state was a confluence of the heavy influence of flatlanders in Chittenden County and Obama's popularity in many rural and working-class areas in the Northeast, the latter of which Trump seemed to have wiped out (e.g., in St Lawrence County, New York--or in much of Maine).
Similarly, in Massachusetts, I concluded that, although Massachusetts wouldn't go the way of Rhode Island, the time when it was on occasion the Most Democratic State was likely also over. In 2016, Trump got the highest vote share of any Republican since 1988 in Bristol and Hampden Counties, Massachusetts, which cast 7.58% and 6.20% of the state's vote, respectively. There seemed to be enough of Massachusetts that was more like Rhode Island and less like those parts of the state that Thomas Frank sees as typifying the post-Solid South Democracy, that they would hold Massachusetts back from being the Most Democratic State again. (In addition to which, there was the oddity that the Democratic vote share in Massachusetts had declined three elections in a row--2008 [the really surprising one], 2012, and 2016.)
Maryland seemed to have a lot going for it. As Robert David Sullivan pointed out in 2011, Maryland is 'strong on almost all the constituencies that lean Democratic (black, urban, college-educated, public-sector workers)'. It also--unlike Massachusetts or Vermont--seemed weak on constituencies that Trump had particularly appealed to. There were seven states in which Hillary Clinton flipped a county casting at least 100,000 votes that had voted for Mitt Romney--only two of those states were solidly Democratic states: Maryland and California. The trends that were turning Virginia from a red, to a swing, to what increasingly looked (accurately) to be a solid blue state, also seemed likely to be accompanied by Maryland becoming the Most Democratic State. Heading into the election, Maryland shared with Alaska the distinction of being the only states in which the Republican vote share had declined three elections in a row. And Maryland--like California, Vermont, and Hawaii (but unlike Massachusetts)--was a state that had experienced a dramatic intensification of its blueness with Obama's candidacy. Once Biden became the nominee, there was the added bonus of the Democratic nominee coming from the Delmarva peninsula (which does seem like it might have had a hand in Biden flipping two Eastern Shore counties, and nearly flipping a third, Wicomico) (and of the Democratic nominee not coming from Vermont [Sanders], Hawaii [Gabbard], or California [Harris]).
Maryland was Biden's third-best state, so I was not far off. I think I underestimated the power of multi-generational Maryland. Of Maryland's 24 counties, Biden carried 10 (and that was after flipping two that Trump had carried in 2016). Even had he flipped Wicomico, Biden would still have been carrying a minority of Maryland's counties. In the 20th and 21st centuries (at least), the only time a major-party nominee's best state has been one in which he was carrying only a minority of the counties was Minnesota, in 1984, for Mondale (and Mondale won that state with only a plurality).
Furthermore, after the 2016 election at least, there were 11 'Trump country counties' in Maryland--Harford, Washington, St Mary's, Calvert, Cecil, Worcester, Allegany, Queen Anne's, Dorchester, Caroline, and Garrett. In five--Cecil, Worcester, Allegany, Caroline, and Garrett--Trump had the best Republican performance since at least 1988. In two--Allegany and Garrett--Trump outperformed Reagan's '84 vote share. Allegany and Garrett together cast 1.61% of Maryland's vote in 2016 (more than Essex cast of Vermont's). Harford cast 4.81%. (Strangely, Trump's vote share declined in all but three Maryland counties in 2020--Baltimore City, Prince George's, and Somerset.)
I didn't realise this until later, but Biden's 67.10% in Teton County in 2020 was the highest vote share of any major nominee in any county--regardless of size--in his opponent's best state since 1948 (when Dewey did better in two counties in Texas that, combined, cast less than half of 1% of Texas' total vote that year). Well, even in 2020, Trump did better in two Maryland counties than Biden did in Teton--Garrett (where Trump got 76.88%) and Allegany (where he got 68.16%). These two counties combined cast 1.52% of Maryland's total vote in 2020. (And that is leaving aside that--obviously, unlike Biden in Wyoming [or Dewey in Texas in 1948]--Trump was carrying a majority of Maryland's counties.) In both 2016 and 2020, the reddest county in the Democratic 'fornia' was Garrett, MD (which, alone, cast a little over half of 1% of Maryland's vote in both elections).
There is enough concentrated Republicanism in Maryland that, although all but one of the members of its Congressional delegation are Democrats, it does have one Republican member in the House of Representatives. And that Republican is not any Republican--it is Andy Harris. (Harris' district includes none of Allegany or Garrett Counties.)
If any state epitomised Obama's 'coalition of Transformation'--a 'more coherent' one than in Bill Clinton's era (or, presumably, than in the era in which the Most Democratic State wandered about and more often than not was the nominee's home state, and amid which the CQ Almanac wrote [in 1984] that the Democratic Party was 'still struggling to find a reliable base. While Republican candidates have been able to count on rolling up huge majorities in most states in the western half of the country, Democratic strength often varies with their candidates.')--as much as (or perhaps even more than) Hawaii, it would have seemed (to me) to be Maryland. (It could be Thomas Frank's Massachusetts, but it seemed that significant chunks of Massachusetts were not Thomas Frank's Massachusetts--and anyway, Massachusetts had already been the Most Democratic State thrice before Obama appeared on the scene.)
And it wouldn't have seemed to be rural state with an apparent militia problem of the sort that would indicate a non-trivial latent degree of support for someone of the likes of Paul LePage. One could say that the Vermont counties I mentioned above were close because of the large write-in vote for Sanders, but Biden did do substantially worse in all those counties than Obama did in 2012 (six points worse in Rutland, nearly eight points worse in Franklin, and over ten points worse in Orleans). In Franklin and Orleans, he did worse than Kerry.
Likewise, Wyoming would not exactly have seemed to epitomise the shift of the GOP's centre of gravity to the 'Scots-Irish zone'. And, at the time, it wouldn't have seemed incidental that Wyoming ceded its spot as the Most Republican State back to Utah at the same time as Kerry flipped its ski resort/mountain nirvana of Teton County (which, needless to say, has not been won back).
Neither state's position seems particularly secure. On the Republican side, Trump did only 1.12% better in Wyoming than in West Virginia. Oklahoma is 3.45% behind West Virginia, so it does seem likely to either become one of those two states consistently, or to oscillate between them. Worth a final mention is North Dakota, a state whose redness Trump intensified substantially, but which has remained in fourth place, behind Oklahoma (its Republican percentage likely weighed down by Trump's weakness in Cass County). Its 2020 Trump percentage was only 0.26% behind Oklahoma's (although that was with Trump doing about equally well in Cass and Oklahoma Counties), but 3.71% behind that in West Virginia. Still, North Dakota finding its way to the title of Most Republican State shouldn't be ruled out. (Next in Republican support after North Dakota, in 2020, was Idaho, a state that seems to have become permanently less Republican since the Bush years.)
Biden's 2020 vote shares in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland were all within less than 1% of one another. Biden's percentage in Hawaii was 1.63% behind that in Maryland (and 2.36% behind that in Vermont). The Biden vote share in California was 0.25% behind that in Hawaii (and 2.61% behind that in Vermont). (Next after California was New York, where Biden's vote share was 2.62% lower than in California.)
The separation between the top three Democratic states and California is not huge, but it seems sufficient to bear out that it is very unlikely, barring flukish conditions, for there to be no small or mid-size state sufficiently idiosyncratic in one way or another to more solidly back each major party nominee than any large state will. (Incidentally, similarly flukish conditions likewise very nearly made the giant state of New York Al Gore's best state in 2000; his percentage in it was just 0.77% behind his percentage in Rhode Island [and it was his second-best state]. Nader did much better, that year, in Rhode Island [and in Massachusetts] than in New York. In 2004, New York was Kerry's fourth-best state, and his vote share in it was 3.57% behind his vote share in his best state--not that much more than the differential between Biden's vote shares in Vermont and California. Similarly flukish conditions could be said to have obtained in 1948--both Mississippi and South Carolina, which between them had held the title of Most Democratic State in the prior 13 consecutive elections, were Thurmond states. Truman did very well in the one Deep South state in which he was on the ballot as the regular Democratic nominee--Georgia--and this state would go on to be Adlai Stevenson's best state in both of his elections. However, even here, Thurmond--from neighbouring South Carolina--got over 20% of the vote, whereas in Texas, more distant and perhaps less preoccupied with the concerns dominating the Deep South, he got less than 10%.)
None of the next several states after New York (Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Washington--which round out the list of states Biden won by at least 1.375:1) seems especially worth mentioning, except Washington. This is the only one of these four states in which Biden did better than Obama in 2008 (and, like California, Hawaii, Vermont, and Maryland, was a state whose blueness was deeply accelerated by Obama--although in Vermont's case, Kerry also had a significant hand in intensifying Vermont's blueness). (Conversely, in Rhode Island, Biden did worse, not only than Obama in 2008, but than Al Gore--and even, slightly, than John Kerry.)
Washington would have a ways to go, but it is one of the more educated, professional states in the country (and has a celebrated radical local politician--not even a Democrat--in Kshama Sawant, as well as the well-known quirk of Seattle's Lenin statue, although its presence doesn't mean what most people are likely to think it means). And, being much smaller than California (which of course it is still behind in terms of blueness), it is less likely to have a large variety of significant cross-currents preventing it becoming highly idiosyncratic vis-à-vis the country. I'm not saying it's likely--in 2020, Trump retained every breakthrough county he flipped in 2016 in Washington (Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Mason, Pacific), and in the largest--Cowlitz, which cast 1.47% of Washington's vote in 2020--Trump improved his vote share by 5.81%. Washington currently sends three Republicans to the House of Representatives (one of whom has a 'reputation'). But it's worth keeping on one's radar.
It seems reasonable to surmise that the title of Most Democratic State--if it doesn't stably settle on a single state--will likely circulate amongst Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland, and perhaps Hawaii, for the foreseeable future--although one wouldn't have guessed that Massachusetts would have been one of these states between December 2008 and November 2016 (in 2008, Massachusetts was only Obama's eighth-best state, its lowest ranking amongst the Most Democratic States since 1980; and in 2012, it recovered to just #6, its lowest ranking amongst the Most Democratic States, bar 2008, since 1992). Of those four states, however, there is something about two of them that would be very odd for a state that would potentially settle into the role of the consistently- or nearly-consistently-most-Democratic State: Hawaii was one of just a handful of states to swing Republican in 2020; and Massachusetts was one of just a handful of states to give Obama (the architect of the modern Democratic coalition) a lower vote share in 2008 than it gave Kerry in 2004.
One possibility is that, if the rural/urban divide seeps into every state, it will become increasingly unlikely for any state to 'typify' a coalition, the way South Carolina, Vermont, Utah, and Rhode Island had done in such a steady way in the past.
States' political personalities used to be shared by both urban and rural areas in the state. This was particularly true of the states that were historically the most consistently Most Republican and Most Democratic States (or even that ever were). For example, as noted above, Minnesota in 1984 was the only instance in the 20th or 21st centuries in which a major party's best state was one in which the opposition party was winning a majority of the counties. In 1948, Truman won all but eight counties in Texas; in 1952, 1956, and 1980, Democrats carried all but five, 11, and 13 counties in Georgia; and in 1992, Bill Clinton carried all but five counties in Arkansas. So it wasn't just that Democrats were doing well in the population centres of these states in those elections. But winning a majority of the counties is something Democrats no longer do in many states.
(Even in 1984, while Mondale carried only 20 of Minnesota's 87 counties, this was still more counties than he carried in any state other than Texas [26/254], Georgia [25/159], and Tennessee [23/95]. There were only 16 states where he carried so much as eight counties, and of these, only in Tennessee, West Virginia, and South Carolina did he carry a larger proportion of the state's counties than in Minnesota. Furthermore, there were only nine states in which Mondale carried more counties than Biden would carry in 2020; South Carolina was not one of these. So it could fairly be said that Mondale enjoyed wide rural support in Minnesota compared to what he enjoyed in most other states--and what goes into making a state a nominee's best state has, of course, to be relative to other states.)
Conversely, Vermont in 1948 was the only instance from (at least) 1892 on in which either the largest county in the Most Republican State voted Democratic, or the largest county in the Most Democratic State voted Republican. (In this case, Chittenden County--which had recently overtaken Rutland County to become the largest county in Vermont--voted for Truman by 2.22%.) And Dewey largely compensated by breaking 60% in the state's second-largest county (Rutland) and 2/3 in its third-largest (Windsor). In every election in which Utah was the Most Republican State, the Republican carried both of the two largest counties in the state (Salt Lake and Utah); in all but one (1996), the Republican got over 55.5% of the vote in both of them (in 1996, Dole won a 45.51%-41.95% plurality in Salt Lake, but carried Utah County with 71.05%). In other words, it wasn't simply that Republicans were doing well in the rural (or especially rural) areas of these states.
But carrying states' largest counties is something Republicans do less and less often recently. Trump did so in only eight states in 2020 (and only tenuously so in Idaho, North Dakota, and Oklahoma); down from 11 in 2016 (one of them carried by his Democratic opponent), 12 in 2012, 17 in 2004, 18 in 2000, and even 16 in 1996--and even with McCain's eight in 2008 (although McCain's eight collectively contained more electoral votes). In his 1976 defeat, Gerald Ford carried the largest county in 26 states, including three large states, eight states carried by his Democratic opponent, and one large state carried by his Democratic opponent.
And it is not just carrying states' largest counties that Republicans are doing less and less often: it is also winning some of states' several largest counties by large margins. As noted above, Dewey may have (narrowly) lost Chittenden in 1948, but he won Rutland powerfully and Windsor very powerfully. Conversely, in Oklahoma, Trump failed to break 60% in any of the three largest counties; and in West Virginia, he failed to break 2/3 in any of the three largest counties. (In North Dakota, he did break 2/3 in the second-largest county, Burleigh.)
To the extent that it continues becoming more and more the case that states no longer have a single political personality that predominates across its rural and urban areas, we may simply see more volatility in the location of the title of the Most Republican and Most Democratic States. Even in those cases that seem to be exceptions (e.g., Wyoming,
Vermont), whatever is making them exceptions could turn out to be
impermanent (especially given that, in being exceptions, they are--for
now--bucking a broad national trend). Laramie County is powerfully Republican for now--but it is not that much more powerfully Republican than, say, Cass County was in 2004 (when it voted 59.39% for Bush, just before it embarked on four straight elections in which it either voted Democratic or gave the Republican a mere plurality). And on the other hand, Democrats have won a majority of Vermont's counties in eight straight elections, but Biden became the first Democrat to win the national election without sweeping Vermont's counties since 1976, possibly revealing cracks in Democrats' hold on a majority of the state's counties. Possibly relatedly, 2016 was the first election since 1988 in which the Democrat did not win a majority of the counties in Vermont's fellow Yankee Kingdom state of Maine; and 2020 was the second.
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§ I later found a 1998 article in which it was reported that
Former President Jimmy Carter, who significantly raised the profile of evangelical Christianity in general and Southern Baptists in particular during the 1970s, has said Southern Baptists are off the mark in their belief that Mormon doctrine is essentially non-Christian and Mormons are therefore in need of evangelization.
The article also observes that
A Southern Baptist interfaith witness leader and Carter's own pastor, however, say Carter is wrong in his views on Mormon teachings.
This came over 20 years after Carter's initial run, and one could infer that Carter's 'rais[ing] the profile of evangelical Christianity' might have made some Mormons wary, given how the Southern Baptist view of Mormonism ca. 1998 is being described.
And, in detailing Carter's well-known 'Catholic problem' (which, of course, would have been more electorally problematic than any 'Mormon problem'), Andrew S. Moore describes how some attributed it, at least partly, to 'traditional Catholic “distrust [of] believers in the Baptist faith"'. And in June 1976, in an observation that might have been applicable to Mormons, James Reston wrote, 'Mr Carter...is identified with many members of his church who have a long history of anti‐Catholicism, anti-Semitism and anti‐Communism...for the moment, Mr. Carter, having given witness to his faith, is being charged with all the bigotry and ancient prejudices of his clan.'
Finally, it appears, from the Google search snippet, that David E. Campbell et al. write, 'Religiously, many Mormons were likely wary of Bryan's brand of fundamentalist Protestantism, but even warier of the Republicans' antagonism toward Mormons...' What might have applied to Bryan--who not only carried Utah (albeit only once), but to this day holds the all-time record high percentage that any presidential nominee has received in the state--seems like it could well have applied to Carter and Bush (in the latter of which cases there would, obviously, have, once again, been something else to be 'even warier of'). Utah would assuredly have powerfully voted for Mike Huckabee, had he ever become the Republican nominee, even after Huckabee asked if Mormons didn't believe that 'Jesus and the devil are brothers'--although, I'd guess, not quite as powerfully as it voted for Romney in 2012.
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