Richland County, located in South Carolina, is home to over 400,000 residents and has a diverse local political landscape. This county is represented by various elected officials in the state legislature in Columbia and at the federal level in Washington D.C. Along with these representatives, there are several candidates running for offices that serve the county. These include County Council seats and state legislative seats in both the House and Senate. These candidates come from different backgrounds and represent a wide range of views on how to best serve their constituents. There are debates about issues such as education funding, economic development strategies, public safety initiatives, and infrastructure improvements. The elections scheduled for this year will determine who will be representing Richland County in 2021 and beyond.
The political climate in Richland County, SC is very liberal.
In Richland County, SC 68.4% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election, 30.1% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 1.5% voted Independent.
In the last Presidential election, Richland county remained overwhelmingly Democratic, 68.4% to 30.1%.
Richland county voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 2000.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Richland County, SC is very liberal.
Columbia Metro Area is leaning liberal.
South Carolina is somewhat 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.
Richland, South Carolina: D D D D D D
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).
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. 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 three elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Richland County, SC
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 17,245 contributions totaling $1,867,766 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $108 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 3,813 contributions totaling $1,358,907 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $356 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)