County Read No. 10 · Madison County
Madison County: a 34-point swing and two House seats with no Democrat
Richmond, Berea and Eastern Kentucky University. Beshear carried Madison by 185 votes in 2019 and by 932 in 2023; Trump carried it by 31. That's a 34-point swing, the widest of the ten counties in this series so far. Its Democrats out-vote its Republicans in Beshear years and in no others, and two of its four House seats have no Democrat on the ballot.
LOUISVILLE — Halfway. Ten of twenty, and the county with the biggest number in the series. Same five questions: the paper, the ballots, the turnout, the map, the money.
What the paper says. Madison County has 72,199 registered voters on the August file: 26,512 Democrats, 36,376 Republicans, 9,311 in neither column. That's 36.7% Democratic, 50.4% Republican, 12.9% no-party. In 2010 it was 53.8% Democratic and 37.5% Republican. The Republican column has grown by 16,700 in sixteen years — nearly doubled — while the Democratic column lost 1,800; the county added 19,600 voters and the Democrats got none of them. The purge took 4,287 names since Election Day 2024, 3,006 of them Democrats. It's the same story as Warren, Hardin and Daviess: a paper Democratic county from another era, being corrected.
What the ballots say. Here's the number.
Romney by 29. Trump by 31, then 27, then 31 — 29,130 to 15,180 in 2024, a 13,950-vote margin. And Andy Beshear by 185 votes in 2019 — 15,259 to 15,074 — and by 932 in 2023, 14,012 to 13,080, a 3.4-point win. Republican by 30.9 in November 2024, Democratic by 3.4 in November 2023: a 34.3-point swing, the widest of the ten counties so far, two-tenths of a point ahead of Daviess. Madison is Daviess with a university in it: the same paper-Democratic history, the same 30-point federal Republican margin, and the same willingness to give a Democrat it likes a narrow win on the same registration.
Who's turning out. Same pattern as Daviess, sharper.
In 2019, Madison's registered Democrats out-voted its Republicans, 48.4 to 47.6. In 2023, 39.4 to 38.0 — one of the widest Democratic turnout edges in any county outside Louisville and Lexington. In every other year the Republicans led: by a point in 2018, six in 2020, three in 2022, eight in 2024. So the Democratic column here shows up when Beshear is on the ballot and only then, and the two years it showed up are the two years the county went Democratic. That's not a coincidence, it's the whole mechanism: the Beshear swing in Madison isn't only Republicans crossing over, it's Democrats who don't vote in a federal year coming out for one candidate. The no-party column, 9,311 voters, turned out at 24.9% in 2022 and 20.9% in 2023.
Madison's Democrats out-vote its Republicans in Beshear years and in no other years. The 34-point swing is the difference between that column showing up and staying home.
Where it happens. What I can show you is 2024 only. Madison's 2023 governor's returns are in the file at the county level, not by precinct, so the three-election test can't run. The 2024 presidential map fits the lines — 46 of 47 precincts — and that's what's drawn.
Harris carried five precincts — 2,438 votes, by 288 — two in the 81st, two in the 71st, one in the 91st. Trump carried 41, 42,030 votes, by 13,953. That's Richmond's core and Berea's, and everything else. Without the 2023 precinct file I can't tell you which of the 41 red precincts voted for Beshear; the county number says most of the persuadable ones did, since he won the county by 932 with a Republican floor that big. When the 2023 precinct file loads, this is the county I'll re-run first.
What's on the ballot, and who's paying. Four House districts and one Senate district touch Madison. Three of the five have a Democrat.
The 81st is Richmond — 23 of the county's 46 precincts, both of Richmond's blue ones — and it's Deanna Frazier Gordon's, unopposed in 2024. Anthony Looney has $11,888 against her $26,678, two to one, in the seat that holds the university and most of the city. Trump carried its Madison precincts by 7,086, and it's the seat where the Beshear-year Democratic column lives.
The 91st is Darrell Billings's, also unopposed in 2024, $30,662 against David Johnson's $9,198. The 71st — Josh Bray, $68,368 — and the 89th — Timmy Truett, $10,188 — have no Democrat. The 71st holds Berea's two blue precincts and nobody filed. Senate District 34 is Jared Carpenter's, $58,943 against Jessica McIntosh's $9,382; the district is mostly Madison.
The read. Madison has the biggest swing of the series so far and the least to show for it. The Democratic column here is over a third of the county on paper and shows up at the Republican rate exactly twice, both times for Beshear, and both times the county goes Democratic. The other four years it stays home and the county goes Republican by 25 to 31. None of that reaches a legislative seat: the two Richmond and Berea seats had no Democrat at all in 2024, have Democrats at two and three to one this year, and Berea's seat has nobody. In a county with a 34-point swing, the ceiling for a Democrat is set entirely by whether the column that came out for Beshear comes out for anyone else. So far it hasn't. The 81st is where that gets tested, and it's being tested with $11,888.
What I'm watching in November: the 81st against Beshear's 2023 county number, and whether Madison's registered Democrats turn out above the Republican rate for a House candidate. If they do, the swing is portable. If they don't, it belongs to one man.
Tomorrow: Bullitt.
Disclosure: I work in Kentucky Democratic politics. I'm not paid by, and don't advise, any candidate named above. I read this county the same way whether or not it's good news for my side — that's the job.