Editing Jefferson County, Illinois (section)

==Politics==
Jefferson is politically a fairly typical “anti-[[Yankee]]” Southern Illinois county. Opposition to the “[[Yankee]]” Republican Party and that party's [[American Civil War|Civil War]] meant that Jefferson County voted solidly Democratic until [[Theodore Roosevelt]] carried the county in his 1904 landslide. It was to again vote Republican in the greater landslides of 1920 and 1928, but otherwise was firmly Democratic until World War II.

Following the New Deal, Jefferson became something of a [[bellwether]] county, voting for every winning presidential candidate between 1928 and 2004 except in the Catholicism-influenced 1960 election, and that of 1988 which was heavily influenced by [[1988–89 North American drought|a major Midwestern drought]]. Disagreement with the Democratic Party's liberal views on social issues since the 1990s has caused a powerful swing to the GOP in the past quarter-century:<ref>Cohn, Nate; [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/southern-whites-loyalty-to-gop-nearing-that-of-blacks-to-democrats.html ‘Demographic Shift: Southern Whites’ Loyalty to G.O.P. Nearing That of Blacks to Democrats’] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170910131648/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/southern-whites-loyalty-to-gop-nearing-that-of-blacks-to-democrats.html |date=September 10, 2017 }}, ''[[The New York Times]]'', April 24, 2014</ref> as is typical of the [[Upland South]], Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton did far worse than any previous Democrat.

{{PresHead|place=Jefferson County, Illinois|source=<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS|title=Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections|last=Leip|first=David|website=uselectionatlas.org|access-date=November 6, 2018|archive-date=March 23, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180323225526/https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/|url-status=live}}</ref>}}
<!-- PresRow should be {{PresRow|Year|Winning party|GOP vote #|Dem vote #|3rd party vote #|State}} -->
{{PresRow|2024|Republican|12,189|4,240|275|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2020|Republican|12,476|4,608|352|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2016|Republican|11,695|4,425|879|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2012|Republican|9,811|6,089|420|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2008|Republican|9,302|7,462|457|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2004|Republican|10,160|6,713|75|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2000|Republican|8,362|6,685|313|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1996|Democratic|5,937|7,263|1,781|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1992|Democratic|5,497|8,665|3,435|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1988|Democratic|7,624|7,729|73|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1984|Republican|9,642|7,200|43|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1980|Republican|8,972|6,761|607|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1976|Democratic|7,422|8,989|109|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1972|Republican|9,448|6,396|61|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1968|Republican|7,367|6,476|1,624|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1964|Democratic|6,248|9,653|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1960|Republican|9,841|7,784|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1956|Republican|9,637|8,090|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1952|Republican|9,841|8,698|19|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1948|Democratic|7,393|8,928|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1944|Democratic|7,916|8,496|139|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1940|Democratic|8,692|10,887|136|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1936|Democratic|7,290|10,240|138|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1932|Democratic|5,333|9,495|177|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1928|Republican|7,326|5,905|70|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1924|Democratic|5,406|6,258|466|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1920|Republican|5,711|4,772|177|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1916|Democratic|6,028|6,685|292|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1912|Democratic|1,834|3,237|1,543|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1908|Democratic|3,210|3,377|200|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1904|Republican|3,063|2,462|442|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1900|Democratic|2,805|3,332|206|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1896|Democratic|2,603|3,588|116|Illinois}}
{{PresFoot|1892|Democratic|1,949|2,332|953|Illinois}}