Kentucky is usually a "done deal" long before the first ballot is even cast in a presidential year. If you've lived here a while, you know the drill. The networks call the state for the Republican candidate the second the polls close at 6:00 PM local time. 2020 wasn't exactly a shocker in that regard, but the numbers under the hood? Honestly, those tell a much more interesting story than the "red state" label suggests.
We saw record-shattering turnout and some of the weirdest campaign spending in history. It was a year of "firsts" that most people completely missed because they were looking at the national map.
2020 Election Results Kentucky: The Topline Numbers
Let’s get the big stuff out of the way first. Donald Trump won Kentucky. Big. He pulled in 1,326,646 votes, which comes out to roughly 62.1% of the total. Joe Biden managed 772,474 votes, or about 36.2%.
If you're comparing this to 2016, Trump actually did slightly "worse" in terms of margin, though he got way more actual votes. In 2016, he won by nearly 30 points. In 2020, that gap narrowed to about 26 points. Not a seismic shift, but in the world of political data, every percentage point counts.
Voter turnout was the real headline here. Secretary of State Michael Adams, who refers to himself as a "chief election nerd," reported that over 2 million Kentuckians cast a ballot. That’s the highest number ever in the Commonwealth's history. Basically, 60% of registered voters showed up, or at least sent in a ballot from their kitchen table.
The Senate Race: Mitch McConnell vs. Amy McGrath
While the presidential race was predictable, the Senate race was where the real drama (and the real money) lived.
Mitch McConnell was up for his seventh term. Standing in his way was Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot who became a fundraising juggernaut. If you turned on a TV in Kentucky between August and November, you probably saw her face every three minutes.
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McGrath raised a mind-boggling $96 million. Think about that for a second. Nearly $100 million for a single Senate seat in a state with a relatively cheap media market. McConnell "only" raised about $67 million, though his war chest was plenty deep.
Despite the mountain of cash poured into the "Ditch Mitch" movement, the results weren't even close:
- Mitch McConnell: 1,233,315 votes (57.8%)
- Amy McGrath: 816,257 votes (38.2%)
- Brad Barron (Libertarian): 85,386 votes (4.0%)
McConnell actually won by a larger margin than he did in 2014. He even flipped Elliott County and Wolfe County. These are places that had stayed blue for decades—Elliott County hadn't voted for a Republican for Senate since the 1800s until recently. It basically proved that in Kentucky, nationalized politics and "R" vs "D" branding often matter more than how much money you spend on YouTube ads.
Why the Coalfields Stayed Red
There’s a lot of talk about the "Eastern Kentucky Coalfields" and how they vote. 2020 solidified a trend that's been cooking for twenty years. No county in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield voted for Biden.
It used to be that these areas were Democratic strongholds because of the unions. Not anymore. The shift is almost total.
In places like Clay County, Trump took nearly 90% of the vote. In Knott and Magoffin—places that used to be reliably blue—the margins were still massive for the GOP. People here feel like the national Democratic party has walked away from them, and the 2020 results were a loud exclamation point on that feeling.
The Urban-Rural Divide is Widening
If you want to find Joe Biden’s supporters in the 2020 election results Kentucky data, you have to look at the "Golden Triangle"—Louisville, Lexington, and parts of Northern Kentucky.
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Biden won Jefferson County (Louisville) with about 59% of the vote. He won Fayette County (Lexington) with 59% as well. These are the engines of the state, but they are increasingly isolated islands.
Even in the suburbs, the "blue wave" that Democrats hoped for was more of a ripple. In places like Oldham or Boone County, which are wealthier and more educated—the demographic Biden was winning nationally—Trump still won handily. He took 60% in Oldham and 67% in Boone.
How COVID-19 Changed Everything
We can't talk about 2020 without talking about how we actually voted. It was a weird year.
Because of the pandemic, Governor Andy Beshear and Secretary Michael Adams actually worked together—a rarity for a Democrat and a Republican—to expand mail-in voting.
Normally, Kentucky has some of the strictest absentee laws in the country. In 2020, they opened the floodgates.
- Mail-in Ballots: In the primary, nearly 75% of people voted by mail.
- Early Voting: We had three weeks of early in-person voting for the first time.
- The Drop Boxes: Those little metal boxes outside county clerk offices became the most popular spots in town.
Surprisingly, this didn't lead to the chaos people feared. The rejection rate for mail-in ballots was around 4% in the primary, mostly due to missing signatures, but by the general election, voters had figured it out.
Down-Ballot Dominance
If the top of the ticket was a win for Republicans, the down-ballot races were a landslide.
Republicans picked up 13 seats in the Kentucky House of Representatives. That gave them a "supermajority" of 75-25. In the state Senate, they gained two more seats, moving to a 30-8 advantage.
This is huge because a supermajority means they can override any veto Governor Beshear throws at them. Since 2020, we've seen the direct result of this: new laws on abortion, transgender rights, and school funding that the Governor opposed but couldn't stop.
Actionable Insights: What This Means for You
Whether you're a political junkie or just a casual observer, the 2020 results offer some clear takeaways for the future of Kentucky politics.
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- Ignore the Fundraising: If you're looking at a race and see a Democrat raising $100 million, don't assume the race is "toss-up." Kentucky is expensive for Democrats to lose, and cheap for Republicans to win.
- Watch the Margins in NKY: If Republicans start losing ground in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties, that's the only real threat to their statewide dominance.
- The "Beshear" Exception: Remember that while Kentucky voted for Trump by 26 points, they also elected a Democratic governor in 2019. Kentuckians are willing to split their tickets for the right person, but in a presidential year, they almost always go red.
- Check Your Registration: With the 2020 turnout being so high, voter rolls are being cleaned up more frequently. If you haven't voted since 2020, double-check your status at the Kentucky State Board of Elections website.
Kentucky isn't a "purple" state, and 2020 proved it isn't even "leaning" red—it’s deep, dark crimson at the federal level. But the way we vote has changed forever. The expansion of early voting was so popular that the Republican-led legislature actually made some of it permanent in 2021. That might be the most lasting legacy of the 2020 election.