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What makes a place historically Democratic? One way to define this in Kentucky would be seeing how willing a county was to vote for FDR. I averaged FDR's % of the vote in each county in his 4 elections, and got the map below. This largely reflected partisanship in KY for decades!
FDR performed best in the Jackson Purchase region, once a secessionist hotbed and the most culturally southern part of KY. Interestingly, EKY isn't very blue yet. The unionization that shifted EKY left occurred during FDR's admin. Harlan Co. went from Hoover +10 to FDR +16 in '44
The most interesting part is how well the map above predicted how a county would vote for decades after FDR's death. Here's the 2011 Governor election. Only 12/120 counties changed their partisanship in that 80 year period. Most of the state elections in between were similar.
That consistency absolutely fascinates me! Of course, there were some changes. Suburbanization occurred and shifted counties like Boone right (and then left). Urban areas like Louisville grew bluer and rural areas like Todd County grew redder, and Pres. races were very different
However, a lot of things remained the same. That's why they call it "ancestrally Democratic"-I'm a Democrat because Papaw is a Democrat and Papaw is a Democrat because FDR was a Democrat. The same was true for most of KY too, including in the opposite direction.
