Kentucky is currently solidly in Republican control. A Democrat has not won the Presidential election in Kentucky since Bill Clinton won in 1996. The last five presidential elections in Kentucky have seen landslide margins: in 2000 the Republican won by 14.9 percent, in 2004 it was by 19.9 percent, in 2008 the margin was 16.3 percent and in 2012 the Republican won by 22.9 percent. In 2016, Trump defeated Clinton by nearly 30 percent, 62.5 percent compared to Clinton’s 32. 7 percent. With a Partisan Voting Index of R+15, Kentucky has a Republican Governor and 2 Republican U.S. Senators, and 5 of the 6 members of Congress are currently Republicans. Democrat John Allan Yarmuth has represented Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses most of the Louisville Metro Area since 2007.

In 2020, however, there are points of light for Democrats. We are following the Kentucky Senate race because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shows considerable weakness in early polling, and our data suggest that Democratic voter mobilization in 2020 could swing the Senate to the Democrats. Kentucky has a working class, anti-establishment voter base, and no one symbolizes the insider establishment more than Mitch McConnell.

Republicans established control of the Governorship and both houses of the General Assembly in 2017. In 2018, 19 of the 38 State Senate seats were up for election and Republicans won 17 seats, while Democrats only won two seats. The current ratio in the Senate is 29 Republicans to 9 Democrats. Democrats had held the State House until 2016, when the Republicans went from holding 45 seats to holding 64 of the 100 House seats. After the 2018 election, the ratio in the State House is 61 Republicans to 39 Democrats. The next election for seats in both the Kentucky State Senate and State House will take place in 2020.

The Kentucky gubernatorial election took place in November 2019. Since the state repealed its constitutional prohibition of governors serving consecutive terms in 1992, no Republican Governor of Kentucky has ever been elected to consecutive terms. The only Republican to run for re-election, Ernie Fletcher, was defeated by Democrat Steve Beshear in 2007, who served until Matt Bevin was elected in 2015. Steve’s son, Democratic Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear, defeated Bevin by just over 5,000 votes, or 0.37 percent, making this the closest gubernatorial election in Kentucky since 1899. Statewide turnout was just over 42 percent, much higher than for the 2015 gubernatorial election. The result was a major swing from 2016, when Donald Trump won the state by 30 points and Republicans gained a supermajority in both chambers of the Kentucky General Assembly.