According to Voss, that transition happened in three waves — the first in the 1990s as Western Kentucky flipped to the GOP, then as Northern Kentucky shifted to the right shortly after that, and then finally the Democratic areas of Eastern Kentucky became Republican in about 2015.
But a lot of states are Republican, and few are likely to vote for Trump at the same level Kentucky voters will.
Following the 2016 election, an organization of political analysts and scholars of all political stripes called the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group asked what kind of voter supported Trump and found five groups made up his voting base nationally.
The biggest group was “staunch conservatives,” making up 31% of his voters, which are generally going to be your typical Republican voter.
The third largest group screamed “Kentucky” to me.
Twenty percent of Trump voters were what the researchers called “American Preservationists.”
The study described “American Preservationists” as having “low levels of formal education and the lowest incomes of the Trump groups — and non-Trump voters as well. Despite being the most likely group to say that religion is ‘very important’ to them, they are the least likely to attend church regularly.
“They are the most likely group to be on Medicaid, to report a permanent disability that prevents them from working, and to regularly smoke cigarettes. Despite watching the most TV, they are the least politically informed of the Trump groups.”
This is rural Kentucky — particularly Eastern Kentucky, where health has traditionally been poor, people smoke at a rate higher than the statewide average and where few counties have more than 22% of their population with college degrees.
Southern populism plus staunch conservatism equals Kentucky
Scott Lasley, a political science professor at Western Kentucky University, said he sees “American Preservationists” simply as populists — the group of voters who for so long was represented by southern Democrats but who lost their voice as the party changed over the years.
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“I think Trump (and his support in Kentucky) can be explained as a merging of southern populism and staunch conservatism,” Lasley said.
And he said that type of southern populism has a long history in Kentucky. “I wasn’t here then, but I’ve heard Wendell Ford (a Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate from 1974-1999), every time he got off an airplane, made sure he had a cigarette in his hand.”
Those populists, many who live in agrarian parts of the state, have moved to the GOP at a higher rate as the political polarization between rural and urban voters has intensified, Lasley said.
They’re largely white voters who are worried about things like immigration, even though immigration isn’t a huge issue in Kentucky like it is in border states, he said.
Protestant Christians who say religion plays an outsized role in their lives, they’re also driven by the fact that Trump’s Supreme Court appointments struck down Roe v. Wade, allowing states to outlaw abortion.
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The fact that Kentucky is more than 81% white also works in Trump’s favor as white people are much more likely to support Trump. About 9% of Kentuckians are Black and likely to support Harris.
Voss said while Trump has brought “American Preservationists” into the party, it might not be good news to the GOP in the long term since Trump and his strident positions have chased “Chamber of Commerce Republicans” away from the party.
“The problem for the GOP is that the voters Trump ran off used to be loyal partisans, actual Republicans who would support the party more broadly, whereas Trump brought in people who are not Republicans and not even likely to show up for an election if he’s absent from the ballot,” he said.
And that takes us back to where we started. Why are all these people in Kentucky so pro-Trump?
