THE GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL ROADTRIP: KENTUCKY AND LOUISIANA

KENTUCKY

The 2020 Presidential Election in Kentucky

The last time a Democrat won a presidential race in Kentucky was 1996. However, the last time a Democrat won statewide was the previous year. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's win may seem like an anomaly in this red state. However, since 1945, Kentucky has only had three Republican governors, and none served more than a single term. (Kentucky governors were limited to only one term until 1992). Beshear defeated the last Republican governor, Matt Bevin, in 2019.

Until 2019, Democrats held many of the statewide offices, too. Despite being one of the most Republican states on the presidential level and being the home state of longtime Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, the state only recently turned entirely to the Republicans. Before that, Kentucky was a reasonably competitive state that was pretty strongly Democratic on the state level.

For generations, Kentucky politics revolved around two significant bases of support. On one side, the working class and poor voted Democratic. They were primarily concentrated in the eastern Coal Country part of the state, the Western Coal Fields, and in the remnants of the Southern Democrats in the Jackson Plateau on the Tennessee border. On the other side were the upper class and military who lived in and around Louisville, Bowling Green, Lexington, and the Cincinnati suburbs, as well as the descendants of abolitionists in the Pennyroyal region of the state. They made up Kentucky's Republican base.