Editing Boone County, Illinois (section)

==Politics==
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2022}}
{{PresHead|place=Boone County, Illinois|source=<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS|title=Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections|first=David|last=Leip|website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>}}
<!-- PresRow should be {{PresRow|Year|Winning party|GOP vote #|Dem vote #|3rd party vote #|State}} -->
{{PresRow|2024|Republican|13,673|10,159|525|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2020|Republican|13,883|10,542|623|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2016|Republican|12,282|8,986|1,733|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2012|Republican|11,096|9,883|462|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2008|Democratic|10,403|11,333|502|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2004|Republican|11,132|8,286|123|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2000|Republican|8,617|6,481|425|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1996|Republican|6,181|5,345|1,483|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1992|Republican|5,589|5,114|2,924|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1988|Republican|6,923|4,234|65|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1984|Republican|7,536|3,717|53|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1980|Republican|6,697|3,175|1,742|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1976|Republican|6,470|4,458|154|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1972|Republican|7,003|3,131|31|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1968|Republican|5,936|2,801|796|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1964|Republican|5,053|3,694|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1960|Republican|6,552|2,605|5|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1956|Republican|6,706|1,890|6|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1952|Republican|6,628|2,287|17|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1948|Republican|4,916|1,941|25|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1944|Republican|5,708|2,074|18|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1940|Republican|6,330|2,277|25|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1936|Republican|5,375|2,383|264|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1932|Republican|5,244|2,239|92|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1928|Republican|5,965|1,371|33|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1924|Republican|4,872|348|1,244|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1920|Republican|5,386|496|143|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1916|Republican|5,181|1,211|286|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1912|Progressive|1,361|540|1,781|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1908|Republican|2,805|587|296|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1904|Republican|3,036|302|247|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1900|Republican|3,159|704|108|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1896|Republican|3,111|657|78|Illinois}}
{{PresFoot|1892|Republican|1,994|518|189|Illinois}}
As a historic [[Yankee]] settlement, Boone County in its early years was a major base for the [[Free Soil Party]], being one of nine Illinois counties to vote for [[Martin van Buren]] in 1848. Its Free Soil affinities meant Boone became one of the first strongholds of the Republican Party and remained overwhelmingly Republican for the following century, although it did vote for [[Progressive Party (United States, 1912)|Progressive]] [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in 1912 when the Republican Party was severely split. Between at least 1892 and 1928 no Democratic presidential candidate ever managed twenty percent of the county's vote, and in the century up to 1960 no Democrat reached thirty percent – a degree of GOP loyalty comparable to such famous bastions as [[Owsley County, Kentucky|Owsley County]] in Kentucky, [[Grant County, West Virginia|Grant County]] in West Virginia, or [[Avery County, North Carolina|Avery County]] in North Carolina. Even [[Barry Goldwater]], who alienated the Yankee Northeast so much as to lose all but one county there, still won Boone County by 15.6 percentage points, and between 1968 and 1988 no Democrat did better than [[Jimmy Carter]]’s 40.2 percent.

The shift of the Republican Party towards an expanded Southern and Western base, and particularly its growing strength with social conservatives, alienated the Yankee North during the 1990s and 2000s, but Boone County remained in Republican hands. The candidacy of [[Ross Perot]] in 1992 and 1996 caused [[George H. W. Bush]] and [[Bob Dole]] both to win Boone County with mere pluralities against [[Bill Clinton]], and in 2008, Illinois resident [[Barack Obama]] became the only Democrat to carry the county since [[James K. Polk]] in 1844. The 2010s have seen a reversal of this Democratic trend due to concern over employment declines in the “[[Rust Belt]]."