Editing Knox County, Illinois (section)

==Politics==
Knox County's political history is typical of [[Yankee]]-settled Northern Illinois. It leaned [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig]] during its early elections – although giving a plurality to [[Franklin Pierce]] in 1852 – and become powerfully Republican following that party's formation. Although Knox did support [[Progressive Party (United States, 1912)|Progressive]] [[Theodore Roosevelt]] against conservative incumbent President [[William Howard Taft]] in 1912, it was [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]’s 1932 landslide before Knox County again gave the Democratic Party so much as a plurality, and it did not give a Democratic absolute majority until [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] gained such against the anti-Yankee, Southern-leaning [[Barry Goldwater]] in 1964.

Since then, Knox County gradually trended Democratic for the following four decades, so that [[Michael Dukakis]] in his losing 1988 campaign was able to carry the county by the same margin as Johnson had done in 1964. During the 1990s and 2000s, Knox was a solidly Democratic county, voting Democratic by at least nine percentage points in every election from 1992 to 2012. The 2016 election, in the shadow of high unemployment in the “[[Rust Belt]]” saw a swing of over twenty percentage points to [[Donald Trump]], who became the first Republican victor in the county since [[Ronald Reagan]] in 1984.

{{PresHead|place=Knox 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|access-date=March 19, 2018}}</ref>}}
<!-- PresRow should be {{PresRow|Year|Winning party|GOP vote #|Dem vote #|3rd party vote #|State}} -->
{{PresRow|2024|Republican|11,917|9,838|540|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2020|Republican|12,009|10,703|496|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2016|Republican|10,737|10,083|1,683|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2012|Democratic|9,408|13,451|497|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2008|Democratic|9,419|14,191|488|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2004|Democratic|11,111|13,403|194|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2000|Democratic|9,912|12,572|690|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1996|Democratic|7,822|12,487|2,239|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1992|Democratic|8,331|12,524|4,441|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1988|Democratic|10,842|12,752|106|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1984|Republican|14,974|12,027|121|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1980|Republican|14,907|8,749|2,542|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1976|Republican|14,123|11,525|319|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1972|Republican|17,315|9,333|118|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1968|Republican|14,216|9,707|2,473|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1964|Democratic|12,850|15,000|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1960|Republican|17,938|11,889|23|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1956|Republican|18,656|9,558|37|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1952|Republican|18,569|10,354|17|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1948|Republican|15,016|9,772|164|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1944|Republican|15,964|10,070|126|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1940|Republican|17,459|12,597|168|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1936|Republican|14,712|13,697|715|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1932|Democratic|12,244|12,282|392|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1928|Republican|16,151|5,993|186|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1924|Republican|12,968|2,617|4,095|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1920|Republican|12,559|2,852|1,594|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1916|Republican|10,918|6,785|860|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1912|Progressive|1,750|2,758|5,959|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1908|Republican|7,084|3,277|737|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1904|Republican|7,566|1,849|832|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1900|Republican|7,810|3,299|440|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1896|Republican|7,681|3,480|236|Illinois}}
{{PresFoot|1892|Republican|5,800|3,073|715|Illinois}}