Kentucky is a state with a long history of politics and government. In the state, there are multiple local and statewide political candidates vying for office each election cycle. The current governor is Andy Beshear, who was elected in 2019 as a Democrat. Republicans hold a majority in both the Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate. The two major political parties in the state are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There are also several minor parties with representation in the legislature, such as the Libertarian Party and Green Party of Kentucky. Issues that have been important to Kentucky voters throughout its history include healthcare, education, taxes, public safety, infrastructure development, and economic growth. Local political races tend to focus on issues that affect their particular communities while statewide races typically concentrate more on national or global issues.
The political climate in Kentucky is strongly conservative.
In Kentucky 36.1% of the people voted for the Democratic Party in the last presidential election, 62.1% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 1.8% voted for an Independent Party.
In the last Presidential election, Kentucky remained overwhelmingly Republican, 62.1% to 36.1%.
Kentucky voted Republican in the previous six Presidential elections.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Kentucky is strongly conservative.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
Kentucky, Kentucky: R R R R R R
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D for the Democrat and I for the Independent. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last four elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Kentucky
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 101,777 contributions totaling $17,157,534 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $169 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 35,591 contributions totaling $19,705,241 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $554 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)