I’ve been covering politics a long time but there are just some things I’ll never understand — like why in the world Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would come to Kentucky just two weeks before the election when Kentucky is so Trump-crazy that Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t stand a chance here.
But my confusion over the Walz campaign schedule pales in comparison to my utter bewilderment as to why voters in Kentucky, which was long seen as a bellwether in presidential elections, would be so pro-Trump to begin with.
I mean, come on, this guy?
In many ways, he is the antithesis of what a Kentuckian is.
I’ve always considered Kentucky to be pro-military. Donald Trump thinks soldiers and sailors are suckers and losers —especially the ones who have been captured by the military like the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.
I’ve always thought Kentucky was pro-police. But Trump defends the thousands of his supporters who overran Capitol police on Jan. 6, 2021, injuring 140 of the officers trying to protect the building and its occupants. Last week at a town hall meeting, he referred to police as “the others” when talking about the riot.
“We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” Trump said during a discussion with Latino voters on Univision – a statement that was both weird and factually inaccurate.
I’ve always thought Kentuckians valued honesty and Trump, well, …
But here we are.
Just a week and a half away from the presidential election and I’d be shocked if Kentucky isn’t one of the top 10 states for Trump.
In 2016, only the residents of four states were more likely to vote for Trump than those of us in Kentucky — Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma and North Dakota.
And in 2020, only six states — the four from 2016 plus Idaho and Arkansas — had higher percentages of Trump voters than Kentucky.
With Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, throw in a toxic mix of racism and misogyny, and we could be knocking on the door of Wyoming to become the most Trumpiest of Trump states.
Why is Kentucky so pro-Trump?
I hear from a lot of Trump supporters in this job — often I hear things from them I can’t reprint here — and I often ask them why they support Trump. The overwhelming answer I get is the silly argument that Harris is a “socialist” and Trump just has better economic policies.
But they often can’t name any specific policy they favor and retreat back to the “we didn’t have inflation under Trump” or “we were energy independent” under Trump.
It doesn’t seem to matter to them that the U.S. has the strongest economy in the world under Biden and that inflation was triggered in large part to the growth in the economy as the U.S. bounced back from COVID. Nor do they care or acknowledge energy independence really isn’t a thing, and that the nation is producing more oil now than it ever did under Trump.
Steve Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, said some of Trump’s support stems from the simple fact that Kentucky has become increasingly Republican in recent years.
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.
What kind of voter supports Trump?
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?
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.
