Which Kentucky county surprised you the most

[DINGO Joe]

I'm actually on record as saying that I thought Beshear would win Elliott because of the Rocky effect, so it's not that. 

Most of coal country (east and west) had minimal swings except for Harlan and Perry.  Harlan swung hard towards Bevin and Perry swung hard the other way.  Harlan has pretty much been ground zero for the coal decline and chaos in KY this year.  Perry is actually where medical care is coalescing for the region as it closes down in surrounding counties, so I guess the higher number of medical professionals is behind that, still it doesn't quite make sense.

I'm going to go with Madison.  Everyone thought Warren (WKU) would swing towards Beshear and it did bigly, but there wasn't much talk about Madison (EKU) maybe in part to McGrath laying such an egg there in 2018, but it swung as much as Warren did.

[Politician]

Knott

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I might be showing my ignorance about Kentucky by saying this, but Warren.

[Xing]

Campbell and Magoffin, especially the margins.

[morgieb]

Pretty much the margin throughout the entire Eastern coal country was somewhat of a surprise. Only really Harlan (SAD!) voted like you'd expect it to in the Trump era.

Actually that is something low key that might be worth watching - certain areas of coal country that voted hard Trump in 2016 have kind of soured on him. I know Manchin's margin in West Virginia was still a massive Republican swing, but even in the House Dems made a lot of gains vis a vis 2016, and then you see areas like Buchanan and Dickerson voting Dem in the State House and for Sherriff. It's probably nothing, and may dissipate when a Democrat returns to the White House (and it hasn't really lead to gains in states where it might actually mean something), but it is worth noting.

[morgieb]

Also shouldn't this thread be in Gubernatorial/Statewide Elections rather than Congressional Elections?

[Bidenworth2020]

Knott

This, no question. When Steve Beshear won his second term by a lopsided 56-35 margin, he only won this county 52-39, with a right-wing indy taking the rest. This year, when his son won by less than half a point, this county voted to the left of the state at 49-48. In addition to this, all but one Democrat down-ballot outperformed Conway in this county, despite the fact that all but one lost by 15-20 points.

[Badger]

I'm going to take a different Tack and point out that there are at least three counties by my count that Bevan actually flipped from Conway. The biggest I believe was Bourbon County.

Although not a County result, I was also surprised to see how much the Western tip of Kentucky shifted oh, not merely trended, hard toward Bevin.

[TDAS04]

Maybe Floyd

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

magoffin

[DINGO Joe]

While you could drive from another county to go work in a coal mine, these are the counties that still mine coal and the tons mined in 2Q or this year

East KY
Perry     814,629
Pike       715,209
Harlan   451,935
Floyd     316,151
Bell       238,566
Leslie     221,201
Johnson 151,405
Knott     151,035
Whitley  137,558
Martin    137,522
Letcher    89,469
Magoffin   86,283
Knox        52,025
Morgan     30,894
Lawrence    9,820
Breathitt     4,768

WKY
Union        2,749,868
Hopkins        828,227
Ohio             683,545
Webster       546,856
Muhlenberg   519,445
McLean         371,499
Daviess           61,925 

https://eec.ky.gov/Energy/News-Publications/Quarterly%20Coal%20Reports/2019-Q2.pdf