Editing Kentucky (section)

===Politics===
{{Further|Political party strength in Kentucky}}
[[File:United States presidential election in Kentucky, 2016.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.3|[[Treemap]] of the popular vote by county, 2016 presidential election]]

Since the late 1990s, Kentucky has supported [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] candidates for most federal political offices, and, more recently, for state-level office as well. The state leaned toward the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] from 1860 through the 1990s, and was considered a [[swing state]] at the presidential level for most of the latter half of the 20th century.

The southeastern region of the state aligned with the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] during the war and has consistently supported Republican candidates. The central and western portions of the state were heavily Democratic in the years leading to the Civil War, were pro-secessionist and pro-Confederate during the Civil War, and in the decades following the war. Kentucky was part of the Democratic [[Solid South]] in the second half of the nineteenth century and through the majority of the twentieth century.

Mirroring a broader national reversal of party composition, the Kentucky Democratic Party of the twenty-first century primarily consists of liberal whites, African Americans, and other minorities. Although most of the state's voters have reliably elected Republican candidates for federal office since the late 1990s, Democrats held an advantage in party registration until 2022. On July 15, 2022, the [[Secretary of State of Kentucky|Kentucky Secretary of State]]'s office announced that for the first time in its history, the commonwealth had more registered [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] than registered Democrats, with 45.19% of the state's voters registered as Republicans, 45.12% registered as Democrats, and 9.69% registered with [[Third party (United States)|another political party]] or as independents.<ref name="kypartyreg">{{cite web|url=https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Documents/voterstatscounty-20220115-075312.pdf|title=Election Statistics Registration Statistics|website=elect.ky.gov|access-date=January 19, 2022|archive-date=January 19, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220119190209/https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Documents/voterstatscounty-20220115-075312.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

From 1964 through 2004, Kentucky voted for the eventual winner of the election for President of the United States; however, in the [[2008 United States presidential election|2008 election]] the state lost its [[bellwether]] status. Republican [[John McCain]] won Kentucky, but he lost the national popular and electoral vote to Democrat [[Barack Obama]] (McCain carried Kentucky 57% to 41%). 116 of Kentucky's 120 counties supported former [[Massachusetts]] Governor [[Mitt Romney]] in the 2012 election while he lost to Barack Obama nationwide.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/president/kentucky/|title=2012 Kentucky Presidential Results|website=POLITICO|access-date=June 25, 2016|archive-date=June 23, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160623182920/http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/president/kentucky/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/map/#/President/2012/|title=2012 Election Results Map by State – Live Voting Updates|last=POLITICO|website=POLITICO|access-date=June 25, 2016|archive-date=June 27, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160627220942/http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/map/#/President/2012/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Voters in the Commonwealth have supported the previous three Democratic candidates elected to the White House in the late 20th century, all from Southern states: [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] ([[Texas]]) in 1964, [[Jimmy Carter]] ([[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]) in 1976, and [[Bill Clinton]] ([[Arkansas]]) in 1992 and 1996. In the twenty-first century presidential elections, the state has become a Republican stronghold, supporting that party's presidential candidates by double-digit margins from 2000 through 2020. At the same time, voters have continued to elect Democratic candidates to state and local offices in many jurisdictions.

[[Elliott County, Kentucky]] is notable for having held the longest streak of any county in the United States voting Democratic. Founded in 1869, Elliott County supported the Democratic nominee in every presidential election from [[1872 United States presidential election in Kentucky|1872]] (the first in which it participated) until [[2012 United States presidential election in Kentucky|2012]]. In [[2016 United States presidential election in Kentucky|2016]], [[Donald Trump]] became the first Republican to ever carry the county, and he did so in a 44-point landslide, highlighting the modern Republican Party's dominance among rural whites and many ancestrally Democratic, socially-conservative voters.

Kentucky is one of the most [[anti-abortion]] states in the United States. A 2014 poll conducted by [[Pew Research Center]] found that 57% of Kentucky's population thought that [[abortion]] should be illegal in all/most cases, while only 36% thought that abortion should be legal in all/most cases.<ref>{{cite web|title=Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics|url=https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/|access-date=April 17, 2021|website=Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project|archive-date=April 11, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210411213946/https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In a 2020 study, Kentucky was ranked as the 8th hardest state for citizens to vote in.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=J. Pomante II |first1=Michael |last2=Li |first2=Quan |title=Cost of Voting in the American States: 2020 |journal=Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy |date=December 15, 2020 |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=503–509 |doi=10.1089/elj.2020.0666 |s2cid=225139517 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="6" | Voter registration and party enrollment as of December 2024<ref name=KYSBE>{{cite web|url=https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Pages/Registration-Statistics.aspx|title=Registration Statistics|publisher=Kentucky State Board of Elections|date=February 2023|access-date=January 12, 2025|archive-date=November 6, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191106154714/https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Pages/Registration-Statistics.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref>
|-
! colspan="2" | Party
! Number of voters
! Percentage
|-
| {{party color cell|Republican Party (United States)}}
| [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]
| style="text-align:center;" | 1,674,447
| style="text-align:center;" | 47.04%
|-
| {{party color cell|Democratic Party (United States)}}
| [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]]
| style="text-align:center;" | 1,499,867
| style="text-align:center;" | 42.14%
|-
| {{party color cell|Libertarian Party (United States)}}
| Other 
| style="text-align:center;" | 214,075
| style="text-align:center;" | 6.01%
|-
| {{party color cell|Independent politician}}
| Independent 
| style="text-align:center;" | 171,264
| style="text-align:center;" | 4.81%
|-
! colspan="2" | Total
! style="text-align:center;" | 3,559,653
! style="text-align:center;" | 100.00%
|}