Elections in which the last never-Republican counties voted Republican in every state
There are now only two counties in the United States that have never voted Republican for president: Jim Hogg and Brooks Counties, Texas. These are the elections in which the last county, or last counties, never to have voted Republican in every state, voted Republican for the first time.
Many states continued to have new counties created through the late 19th and/or early 20th centuries, and in many cases, new counties' first vote, or even first number of votes, were Democratic. However, unless one of these counties' initial Democratic voting streaks was longer than that of the county in the state that had previously been the most longstandingly never-Republican from that county's founding, I count this state as having ceased to have any 'never-Republican' counties when this second-mentioned county first voted Republican.
In case that was complicated, here's an example: I count Kansas as not having had any 'never-Republican' counties in 1872. In 1872, Morris County, Kansas, whose first two votes had been Democratic, voted Republican. There were counties created in Kansas later than Morris County, and in some of their cases, their first vote was Democratic (or non-Republican), so there were later points when one could say that there were counties that had never voted Republican in Kansas. But none of them ever started off with a string of non-Republican votes any longer than Morris County's initial run of two Democratic votes. For example, Geary County, Kansas' first participating election was 1892, and its first two votes were for Weaver and Bryan. So, as late as October 1900, one could say there was a county in Kansas that had never voted Republican. But in 1900, Geary voted Republican, failing to break Morris County's initial record of two straight non-Republican votes before voting Republican.
I mark these states with a silcrow (§).
Generally speaking, as one might expect, this generally applies to states in which no county--or only one or two counties--had an especially long streak of never voting Republican, and where the literal last date at which one could say there was a county that had never voted Republican would be misleadingly late.
1856
Connecticut
Maine §
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont
These are the five states in which Frémont carried every county in his first presidential run in 1856.
In Maine, there was one county that was not yet in existence, Knox County; it would vote Republican in 1860 (its first participating election), so in this case, there actually was no later election in which one could technically have said that there was a county in the state that had never voted Republican.
1860
New Hampshire (Belknap, Carroll, Coös)
New Hampshire was the only New England state that had any counties that voted for Buchanan in 1856, but they all voted for Lincoln in 1860. Ironically, one of these counties, Carroll, went on to be the only county in New England to vote for Goldwater in 1964.
1872
Kansas (Morris) §
Morris County voted Democratic in its first two elections, 1864 and 1868. Geary County cast its first two votes, in 1892 and 1896, for the Populist James Weaver and then for William Jennings Bryan, but then voted for McKinley in 1900.
1896
Delaware (Kent) *
Michigan (Mackinac) §
* There is, curiously, no data on how Kent County voted in 1896. So I am assuming Kent County voted Republican. At any rate, it voted Republican in 1900.
Of Delaware's other two counties, New Castle voted Republican in 1864, 1872, and 1880 (in the elections before 1896), and Sussex voted Republican in 1872 and 1888. Sussex seems harder to explain, particularly because it would go on to vote Republican in every election from 1896 through 1928 save 1912 (including for Hughes in 1916). Meanwhile, Kent County was the only county in Delaware that voted somewhat in the manner of a Solid South county--it voted Republican in all the elections from 1900 (probably 1896) through 1908, but voted Democratic from 1912 through 1924 (including for Wilson in the close election of 1916, and Cox and Davis in landslide defeats in which they had very little appeal beyond the South).
New Castle's early receptivity to the GOP isn't surprising--Wilmington 'was home to a “very large” community of Friends, or Quakers', a religious group that strongly rejected slavery. However, Sussex County--the state's southernmost county--was the only county in the state, of whose landscape slavery was 'still an important part' by 1831.
In general, in more recent elections, Delaware's counties have sorted out north-to-south more as one would expect, although, as late as 1968, George Wallace's best county in the state was Kent (where he got 19.1%, as compared to 17.5% in Sussex and 11.5% in New Castle). Robert David Sullivan even called Delaware '[t]he best pictoral representation of [the] North/South partisan split', noting that in almost every election over the prior 50 years (as of 2011), Democrats did best in the northern-most county and worst in the southern-most. (However, even here, the two southern counties behaved somewhat oddly in the one exception--1976, 'when Democratic Southerner Jimmy Carter did best'--not in Sussex--but 'in the middle county of Kent'.) In the 2008 Democratic primaries, as Michael Barone noted, Hillary Clinton did best, in Delaware, in 'Sussex (the southern-accented south end of the state)'; Obama did best in New Castle, 'demographically similar [to the] Philadelphia suburban counties'.
Mackinac voted Whig in 1840, and Democratic from 1844 through 1892--13 straight elections. Arenac County, which first voted in 1884, voted for non-Republicans for its first four elections before voting Republican in 1900.
1900
North Dakota (Bottineau, Cavalier, Griggs, Pembina, Sargent, Towner, Walsh) §
Oregon (Jackson, Klamath, Lake, Umatilla) §
Wyoming (Crook, Johnson, Sheridan, Sweetwater, Uinta) §
Of these, only Oregon has some substantial non-Republican voting streaks, as its first election was 1860 (vs. 1892 for both North Dakota and Wyoming). Jackson County voted non-Republican for its first ten straight elections, from 1860 through 1896 (for Breckenridge in 1860, and for Weaver in 1892), and Umatilla County voted non-Republican for its first nine straight elections, from 1864 through 1896 (for Weaver in 1892).
Lake and Klamath actually voted non-Republican in just their first six and four elections, respectively; they failed to top the non-Republican voting streak of the Oregon county that had started out with the longest non-Republican voting streak before them, Baker County, which voted Democratic in its first six elections (1864-1884). In general, if there are multiple never-Republican counties in a state that go Democratic in the same year as the state's longest never-Republican county does, I count all of them as long as they have any kind of extended streak of not voting Republican, mostly because I didn't feel like sussing out which of them would actually have counted on their own.
These fairly long Democratic (or non-Republican) voting streaks in a number of Oregon counties might reflect settlement by 'ranchers and farmers from Texas, Missouri, and the border states' (p. 482).
1904
Idaho (Bear Lake, Boise, Custer, Elmore, Idaho, Kootenai, Owyhee, Shoshone, Washington) §
Iowa (Dubuque, Fremont)
Nebraska (Sioux) §
Minnesota (Scott, Stearns) §
Nevada (Lincoln) §
South Dakota (Hand, McCook, Meade) §
Washington (Franklin, Skamania) §
Dubuque County voted Democratic for 14 straight elections, from 1848 (its first election) through 1900. Fremont County voted Whig in 1852 (its first election) and then Democratic for 12 elections in a row.
Scott and Stearns Counties both voted Democratic in their first 11 elections in a row, from 1860 through 1900. Pennington County first voted in 1912, but, as it voted for TR in 1912 and for Wilson in 1916, it wasn't until 1920 that it voted Republican. Lake of the Woods County first voted in 1924, but, as it voted for La Follette in 1924, it wasn't until 1928 that it voted Republican.
Lincoln County voted Democratic (or Populist, in 1892) nine elections in a row, from 1868 through 1900. Clark County first voted in 1912 (hitherto it had been part of Lincoln County), and, as its first four votes were for Wilson, Wilson, Cox, and La Follette, it wasn't until 1928 that it voted Republican.
Even with our complicated rule, ancestrally Republican Nebraska ended up with an (arguably) somewhat misleadingly late date at which it still had a 'never-Republican county'. Sioux County's first participating election was 1888; its first four votes were for non-Republicans (Cleveland in 1888, Weaver in 1892, Bryan in 1896 and 1900). The prior record, set by Cheyenne County and tied by Keith County, was three elections. To be fair, while the 1892, 1896, and 1900 votes are easily explained by populism, the 1888 vote for Cleveland is not.
The Idaho and South Dakota counties named all voted Weaver-Bryan-Bryan. The two in Washington State, however, voted Cleveland-Bryan-Bryan.
1916
Wisconsin (Ozaukee) †
Beginning in 1856, Ozaukee County voted Democratic for 15 straight elections--enough to qualify as a 'streak' per Robert Wheel--before Charles Evans Hughes became the first Republican (or indeed non-Democrat) to carry it in 1916, amid a narrow national defeat.
1920
California (Colusa, Mariposa)
Colorado (Mineral, Montezuma)
Montana (Broadwater) §
New Jersey (Warren)
New York (Schoharie)
Utah (Washington)
Colusa and Mariposa rejected the GOP 17 elections in a row, from 1852 through 1916 (Colusa voted for Fillmore in 1856, and both voted for Breckinridge in 1860).
The other counties that were the last remaining never-Republican counties in their states in the Mountain West before voting for Harding had been on their way to building up reasonably impressive Democratic voting streaks (especially since they involved voting for Parker). Montezuma and Mineral both first voted in 1892, and voted for James Weaver that year, and then voted Democratic in the next six straight elections. (This run of seven elections beat out Las Animas County's six-election run of non-Republican voting from 1888 through 1900; every Colorado county younger than Montezuma and Mineral either voted Republican in 1920 as well, or [as in Broomfield's case] its very first vote was Republican.) Broadwater voted Democratic in five straight elections, from 1900 through 1916. (The younger Lake County's very first vote was for La Follette in 1924, so it didn't vote Republican until 1928.) Washington County, Utah voted Democratic in six straight elections from 1896 through 1916.
1928
Illinois (Brown, Greene)
Ohio (Brown, Holmes, Monroe, Pickaway, Shelby)
Pennsylvania (Columbia, Greene, Monroe)
1952
Indiana (Brown, Dubois)
Maryland (Queen Anne's)
New Mexico (De Baca) §
Indiana also had counties that cast their first Republican vote in 1940 (Franklin) and 1944 (Wells) (so, after the 1928 election, it had four never-Republican counties, putting it in even further contrast with other free-soil antebellum states). The trickle of Republicans breaking through in previously never-Republican counties in Indiana, lasting longer than anywhere else in the free-soil antebellum states, feels somewhat of a piece with the similar trickle of Republicans breaking through in previously never-Republican counties in the South (which would continue, of course, through 2016). Dubois County went on to be a 'Bush country county' in 2000.
De Baca County, in New Mexico's 'Little Texas' region, had first voted in 1920; but this still enabled its Democratic voting streak to beat out those of Chaves, Curry, and Eddy (the three counties in the state that voted Democratic in all four of the state's first four elections--1912, 1916, 1920, and 1924). It also meant that De Baca had voted for three Democratic landslide losers in the 1920s (Cox, Davis, and Smith). Chaves, Curry, and Eddy are also all 'Little Texas' counties, and each would individually hand New Mexico to Bush in 2004. (Bush also did superlatively well in De Baca County--getting 71.1% of its vote--but it is much smaller than the other three.)
(Los Alamos County voted for Stevenson in its first participating election, in 1952, but then voted for Eisenhower in 1956.)
As with Indiana, the lateness of New Mexico's losing its last never-Republican county showcases its status as an outlier outside the South with areas of significant Southern sympathy. As Kevin Phillips writes in The Emerging Republican Majority (p. 456),
Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Nevada were principally settled by westward migration from the post-bellum South...Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico were long as much "Border" states as Kentucky and Missouri.
Arizona retained a never-Republican county for significantly longer than New Mexico, as Greenlee County (which first voted in 1912, earlier than De Baca) did not vote Republican until 2000. Not only that, however, but Graham County (which also first voted in 1912) did not vote Republican until 1956--so even after New Mexico lost its last never-Republican county, neighbouring Arizona still (briefly) had two.
1964
Alabama (Bibb, Choctaw, Coffee, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale, Henry, Lamar, Monroe, Pickens, Pike, Tallapoosa, Tuscaloosa)
Mississippi (Alcorn, Benton, Calhoun, Choctaw, Covington, Franklin, Greene,
Harrison, Itawamba, Jackson, Jasper, Jones, Leake, Lee, Neshoba, Newton,
Perry, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Scott, Simpson, Smith, Tate, Tippah,
Tishomingo, Union, Webster, Winston, Yalobusha)
1972
Arkansas (Bradley, Calhoun, Cleburne, Cleveland, Cross, Dallas, Faulkner, Grant,
Greene, Izard, Lawrence, Lonoke, Miller, Poinsett, Saline, Sevier,
White)
Florida (Bradford, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Levy, Union)
Georgia (Franklin, Hall, Hancock, Hart, Heard, Henry, Jackson, Madison, Rabun, Stephens, Treutlen, Troup, Upson, Ware, Wheeler)
Hawaii (Oahu)
Louisiana (Cameron)
North Carolina (Currituck, Duplin, Gates, Hoke, Lee, Scotland)
Oklahoma (Bryan, Choctaw, Johnston, Love, McCurtain)
South Carolina (Cherokee, Union)
Virginia (Franklin, Nelson)
West Virginia (Webster)
Hawaii is an obvious outlier here; Oahu County had voted Democratic in just three straight elections when it lost its never-Republican status.
1984
Missouri (Monroe)
2000
Arizona (Greenlee)
2008
Tennessee (Stewart)
2016
Kentucky (Elliott)
Tennessee and Kentucky lost their last never-Republican counties around the same time, and it does seem they were somewhat outliers in terms of having counties that were atavistically sufficiently loyally Democratic to vote for McGovern. In the antebellum slave states plus Oklahoma, Nixon swept the counties of Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. In the rest--leaving aside Tennessee and Kentucky--the only McGovern counties that have ever gone on to vote Republican are West Feliciana, LA, Monroe, MO, Cottle, TX, Zapata, TX, and Logan, WV.
> 2020
Texas (Brooks, Jim Hogg)
Brooks and Jim Hogg are both in the Rio Grande Valley and, as discussed below, before the 2020 election, I would have assumed that the chances of their never-Republican status ever falling to have been dim. (It should be noted that Biden still won both comfortably, although by margins that were much smaller than any Democrat's in recent history.)
These two might also be thought to be not of the same kind as other Southern never-Republican counties (and, if their never-Republican status extended far beyond Elliott's--which it still could--that would seem to tend to bear that out).
The most recent election in which a never-Republican county in Texas lost its never-Republican status was 1972, when 37 counties did so:
Archer, Baylor, Bowie, Burleson, Caldwell, Coke, Coryell, Crane, Delta, Fannin, Foard, Franklin, Freestone, Gonzales, Hardin, Haskell, Henderson, Hopkins, Kaufman, Leon, Limestone, Llano, Milam, Morris, Navarro, Newton, Orange, Rains, Rockwall, Sabine, San Saba, Shelby, Stonewall, Titus, Trinity, Van Zandt, Williamson
Many of these were, presumably, amongst the 'rural', 'very white, Protestant, Southern' counties, 'l[ying] away from the Mexican border', that Walter Manley pointed out in 1988 that '[n]o Democratic presidential nominee [had] ever won Texas without carrying'.
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This metric can be used as a very rough indicator of how Southern or Southern-influenced a state is. For example, these are the states that still had never-Republican counties after 1928 (all of which would continue to have never-Republican counties until at least Eisenhower). These are all the former slave states less Delaware, plus Indiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. (I am not including Hawaii, because I mean directly after the 1928 election, when Hawaii was not yet a state.)
As we have seen above, Kevin Phillips remarked on the 'border state' status of New Mexico and Arizona (and Nevada, where Lincoln County had a fairly impressive initial run of voting Democratic). (And although New Mexico and Arizona were both very young states at the time, any never-Republican county, after the 1928 election, would have had to have voted for three landslide losers--Cox, Davis, and Smith. [It could have voted for La Follette in 1924, although none of those in New Mexico and Arizona did, and in generally it would be unlikely for a never-Republican county to have voted Cox-La Follette-Smith, as this was at a minimum an unusual voting pattern [I'm not actually sure any county followed this pattern offhand].)
Indiana's retention--alone amongst ante-bellum free-soil states--of never-Republican counties after 1928, showcases the degree to which it diverges from the rest of the Midwest. That said, looking at the states that still had a never-Republican county after the 1920 election is also revealing. These include all the former slave states less Delaware, plus Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, plus all the Route 30 states save New Jersey. All the Route 30 states were old enough at this point that this meant that their remaining never-Republican counties had--in addition to voting for Cox in 1920--voted for Parker in 1904, and even for Greeley in 1872.
There were Northern states that had 'never-Republican counties' up to the 1920 election. The two antebellum free-soil states that had a 'never-Republican county' up to the 1920 election were New Jersey and New York. In each case, the county in question (Warren, Schoharie) is included in the Raitz-Ulack definition of Appalachia (a definition that goes by cultural rather than economic factors).
The presence of never-Republican counties up until even 1928 in states of such age as Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (and Indiana), arguably establishes their standing as 'Northern border states', all clearly having a substantial Southern influence lacking in states farther north (as discussed here). (New Jersey is also referred to as a 'Northern border state', and arguably, Warren County's loyal Democraticness testifies to a Southern-allied element in New Jersey. The same might apply to Schoharie County, but it would be unreasonable to call New York a 'border state'. Furthermore, it's worth noting that Warren County borders Monroe County--one of the counties tied as Pennsylvania's last never-Republican county--and that there is one other county in New Jersey--neighbouring Sussex County--that voted Republican only once prior to 1920, in 1896. In New York, there weren't really any counties that had almost as untainted a run of not voting Republican until 1920 as Schoharie, outside the boroughs of New York City [although another rural upstate county, Hamilton--separated from Schoharie by a couple relatively geographically small counties--had a relatively idiosyncratically long run of not voting Republican, until 1896 (the first of four consecutive Republican votes by the county)].)
There were, of course, reasons for loyalty to the Democratic Party other than some sort of Southern sympathy. Dubuque County, Iowa; Stearns and Scott Counties, Minnesota; and Ozaukee County, Wisconsin were not likely to have been settled significantly from the South. However, whatever the reasons for counties in the Upper Midwest standing loyally by the Democracy for relatively extended periods, they were generally not strong enough to produce a vote for Parker in 1904 or for Cox in 1920.
It seems likely that, in most cases of relatively longstanding Democratic loyalty in the Upper Midwest, it was a matter of heavily ethnic Catholic settlement (although I don't know about Mackinac County, Michigan). Dubuque, Ozaukee, Stearns, and Scott (MN) all voted for Smith in 1928. (Mackinac County did not; nor did Fremont County, Iowa, which is on the border with Missouri.)
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The reverse would not work, by the way--that is, noting when various states lost their last never-Democratic county would not even be a rough proxy for a state's 'Northernness'. As Robert David Sullivan showed here, many of the most loyally Republican counties were in Southern Appalachia. Sullivan wasn't tracking counties that had never voted either Democratic or Republican, but even today, there are never-Democratic counties in several Southern states (Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland). The South contains a majority of the remaining never-Democratic counties, and Tennessee is the single state with the most never-Democratic counties, by far.
Meanwhile, there is not a single never-Democratic county in Vermont, nor in the entirety of New England--nor has there been since 1964. Nor is there a single never-Democratic county in any Upper Midwestern state (defined as these states) save Michigan, which has one. More than that, there were no never-Democratic counties in any of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North or South Dakota, or even the ancestrally Republican state of Nebraska on the eve of the 1964 election. (There were three in Kansas--Douglas, Doniphan, and Riley--two of which [Doniphan and Riley] survived the 1964 election, and one of which [Doniphan] remains today.)
It could be that the two parties' ancestral bases might simply have differing propensities for undying loyalty to any party. Michael Barone implied as much when he noted, in his discussion of 'Jacksonians' and 'academics', that
I don't know which side of this argument you like, but as someone who is an academic by experience (degrees from Harvard and Yale) and a Jacksonian by inheritance (my paternal grandmother, whose West Virginian great-grandfather voted Republican as late as 1944 because the Confederates had burned his family's barn), I think I have some understanding of both sides.
It is particularly significant that his West Virginia ancestor was loyally Republican. Undying loyalty to party might be a feature of Jacksonians, and Jacksonians are the Democracy's most historic base, but those Jacksonians who are loyal to the Republican Party, have proven more loyal to the party than the areas that formed the bulk of the Republican Party's ancestral base (New England, the Upper Midwest).
The Jacksonian wont for party loyalty is also corroborated in a 2013 article on Elliott County, Kentucky:
"Our Democratic principles and how we're registered to vote was handed down from generation to generation," explained Rocky Adkins, who has served as Elliott's representative in the statehouse in Frankfort, Ky., since 1987.
Adkins' father, Jesse Adkins, a retired schoolteacher, voted Democratic in every presidential election, except for 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower's promise to end the Korean War lured him to the opposing side. His father, a Democrat of the Solid South mold and not inclined to vote on policy, was not pleased.
"Twenty-five or twenty-six years later, I got foolish enough that I told my dad about that. He just about whipped me on the spot!" Jesse Adkins recalled.
...
That said, Gayle Clevenger remained unfazed by the forces turning her country away from Democratic presidential candidates. "I go to church, I listen, I take what I need, I leave what I don't," she explained. Besides, she added, "If I stop going to church, who will come to my funeral?"
John Clevenger's reaction was swift.
"Vote Republican one time and I won't be there!" he said.
Robert David Sullivan addressed the anomaly of Elliott County (the only rural white Southern county to appear blue on his June 2016 map of counties that had voted the same way over the past century) thus:
For more than a century after the Civil War, Kentucky was characterized by deeply Democratic and deeply Republican counties just a few miles apart, representing the split over whether to secede from the Union.
Hence, Jacksonian Republicans stuck by Goldwater, whereas the voters in the eight never-Democratic counties in Vermont, and the four never-Democratic counties in Massachusetts, as of October 1964, did not. (Of course, it's also possible that Jacksonian Republicans had less of a problem with Goldwater.) (Amongst the never-Democratic counties as of October 1964, incidentally, was Dukes County, Massachusetts--Martha's Vineyard.)
It does seem as though ancestral Republicans in New England were more prone to party loyalty than their fellow Yankees who had gone west, as evidenced by the fact that even as of October 1964, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa had no never-Democratic counties (whereas Vermont had eight, and Massachusetts had four). It seems that Republican Party loyalty in the Upper Midwest and Plains West was more easily shaken by populism (Bryan, Wilson, FDR), whereas Republican loyalty in New England was more easily shaken by opposition to Goldwater (who actually did relatively well in the Plains West, although not in the more Great Lakes-oriented part of the Upper Midwest, or in Iowa).
There are 21 remaining never-Democratic counties (there were 22 until Riley County, Kansas voted for Biden last year) (Trump's 2020 vote share is listed for each):
Edwards, IL (84.2%)
Ogle, IL (61.9%)
Doniphan, KS (80.2%)
Jackson, KY (89.2%)
Leslie, KY (89.8%)
McCreary, KY (88.0%)
Garrett, MD (76.9%)
Missaukee, MI (75.9%)
Avery, NC (75.8%)
Wilkes, NC (77.8%)
Yadkin, NC (79.97%)
Union, PA (61.2%)
Blount, TN (71.1%)
Carter, TN (79.96%)
Cocke, TN (81.9%)
Grainger, TN (84.5%)
Jefferson, TN (79.0%)
Johnson, TN (82.9%)
Sevier, TN (77.6%)
Unicoi, TN (79.4%)
Grant, WV (88.4%)
(The Wikipedia article for Union County, Pennsylvania says that Andrew Jackson carried it in 1828. For whatever reason, the Crystal Ball database starts in 1836, so I have been using 'never voted Democratic from 1836 on' as tantamount to 'never voted Democratic', somewhat as Robert Wheel does here.)
These counties are located in these nine states. 16 of the 21 counties (or over 3/4) are in the Appalachian South. Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina are the only states with even as many as three, and Tennessee alone, with eight, accounts for nearly 2/5 of the national total. Arguably the only never-Democratic counties that reflect the principal part of the traditional Republican base are Doniphan, KS, Missaukee, WI, and Ogle, IL (and possibly Union, PA). (Edwards, IL is in the state's 'Little Egypt'.)
One small curiosity about presidential elections is that each of the last five persons elected president from a position of non-incumbency--Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden--carried at least one county that had never voted for his party before. (With the exception of Trump, none of their re-election challengers carried a county that had never voted for his party before.*)
Counter-intuitively, this had not been true of any of Kennedy, Carter, or Reagan in their initial elections (it was true of Reagan in 1984).
From Trump's vote shares in the 21 remaining never-Democratic counties, this seems unlikely to be the case of the next Democratic president (or the next Democrat to take the presidency back for his or her party).
Before the 2020 election, it had also been seeming unlikely to be the case of the next Republican president, as, after Elliott fell, the only two remaining never-Republican counties were Brooks and Jim Hogg, in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. Hillary Clinton got 74.6% and 77.2% in these two counties, respectively, and a Democrat had not gone below 60% in either since 1972. However, in 2020, while Biden still won both powerfully, he did extremely atypically weakly in both, getting 59.2% in Brooks and 58.8% in Jim Hogg, mirroring the overall strong Republican trend across the Rio Grande Valley. Biden still won both counties in a landslide, but it is conceivable that the next Republican president will continue the tradition of ending a county's never-Republican streak.
* It is further worth noting that the last six losers to lose despite carrying a county that had never voted for their party before are McCain in 2008, Goldwater in 1964, Nixon in 1960, Dewey in 1944, Willkie in 1940, and Smith in 1928. Three of these (2008, 1960, and 1928) were open elections; in two of them, both nominees carried counties that had never voted for their party before (Kennedy did not). In 1964, and, indeed, in 1940, the incumbent winner likewise also carried at least one county that had never voted for his party before. 1944 is, then, the last election in which a challenger to an incumbent carried a county that had never voted for his party before, and in which the incumbent himself did not carry any counties that had never voted for his party before, and in which the incumbent won.
Kalawao County is coextensive with the Kalaupapa National Historical Park, and the Kalaupapa Settlement where the Hawaiian kingdom (and then the territory, and the state) used to exile those suffering from Hansen's disease (a/k/a "leprosy") beginning in the 1860s. The quarantine policy was lifted in 1969, after Hansen's disease became treatable on an outpatient basis and could be made non-contagious. However, many of the resident patients chose to remain, and the state has promised they can stay there for the rest of their lives. No new patients, or other permanent residents, are being admitted.
I expect also that the county, and the unusual legal structure under which it operates, will live as long as the remaining patients, then it will be folded into Maui County. The state already is planning to turn the county over to the National Park Service when no patients remain there. The laws regarding state administration of the county would likely have to be changed as part of the transfer, and abolition of the county would be a logical part of those changes.A Hawaii State Senator expressed the hope that 'it should remain as Kalawao County', but in that case, presumably, it would become a county that people could move into at will. (The state Senator continued, 'We should try and bring some life and commerce into the place that keeps it going...Make it a place where we go to rejuvenate ourselves.')
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