Tbh I didn't realize that it was the home of the state capital. I thought it was a coal county that maybe still had a decent sized minority of ancestral Democratic support but Rowan seems to be a better example of that.
I thought exactly the same way about Rowan (even made a thread about it similar to this one), but turns out it's home to a small college that somehow makes it more competitive than it ought to be. I just don't get it, though, since the college it houses isn't that well-known and I don't think all college campuses are automatically liberal (at least not campuses of small colleges) simply by virtue of being near a college; there have to be some local colleges in red areas (like Rowan) that vote red like the rest of the county, if less so. Because unless the county's dominated by the college, some precincts in the area almost certainly supported Biden. Either that or the rest of the county is less conservative than it should be.
See, the thing is is that most colleges really are automatically liberal, even in Republican areas. It makes logical sense really--even in places like Kentucky, a good 25-30% of white voters are Democrats. And I think it's pretty intuitive that white Democrats would more concentrated in college towns, considering young people and PhDs are both D-leaning constituencies.
If you compare precinct results in Morehead to those in other comparable KY college towns, you'll see that Democrats net a few precincts from college towns in Richmond and Murray too.
There are exceptions to Universities=Democratic of course. But most of those tend to be (white) universities in deep south states where the white vote is very Republican--thinking of Oxford, Starkville, Tuscaloosa, and historically College Station here. Private schools often sometimes have their own peculiar inner culture that can lean conservative, like Hillsdale or Liberty.
