Kent County, Maryland

[mileslunn]

How come Kent County, Maryland despite being fairly rural, almost 80% white and on Eastern shore which is fairly conservative is going Democrat?  Most counties make sense as most rural going Democrat are in case of West large ski resorts (i.e. Blaine County), have a community college, or popular tourism areas (reason Door County, Wisconsin and Leelanau County, Wisconsin went Democrat unlike other counties) or they are exurbs with strong spillover from larger liberal counties (see rural ones near Madison, Wisconsin) or they have large minority populations, i.e. Black Belt.  But Kent County, Maryland has none of those and its not in New England where you do get lots of rural counties voting Democrat that wouldn't elsewhere, so what is the reason?

[AGA]

So Biden flipped 4/5 Kent counties, cool.

[Roronoa D. Law]

Not sure but I know there is a college somewhere out there.

[cvparty]

its electorate is relatively old. door and leelanau also have high senior populations which is probably a more direct reason in why they flipped than tourism per se

[mileslunn]

its electorate is relatively old. door and leelanau also have high senior populations which is probably a more direct reason in why they flipped than tourism per se

Trump won seniors albeit by smaller margins.  However in Door and Leelanau I believe a lot of the seniors are ones that moved from cities (mostly Chicago and Milwaukee in Door county while mostly Detroit and Chicago in Leelanau county) so brought their urban values with them.  Would make sense though if Kent County had a lot of Baltimore and Washington retirees.  Rural lifestyle but still close to city.  In Canada where I live, Gulf Islands in BC and Simcoe County in Ontario get a lot of that as many seniors like the country lifestyle but want to be close to the city.

Also wonder if with COVID-19, that helped flip those three counties as some of those who work for companies that allow them to work remotely left the city for those counties.