Elliott County, Kentucky

Elliott County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. Its county seat is Sandy Hook. The county was formed in 1869 from parts of Morgan, Lawrence, and Carter counties, and is named for John Milton Elliott a judge, U.S. Congressman, and a member of the 1st Confederate States Congress from Kentucky; he was also involved in the formation of the Confederate government of Kentucky. Some historians, however, contend the county was named after John Milton Elliot's father, John Lyle Elliot a U.S. Congressman and Confederate Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. In regard to alcohol sales, Elliott County is a dry county, meaning the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited everywhere in the county.

It is one of the lowest-income counties in the United States, partly due to the presence of Little Sandy Correctional Complex. From 1872 to 2012, the county always voted Democratic in presidential elections.

History

Elliott County was established in 1869 from land given by Carter, Lawrence, and Morgan counties. A fire at the courthouse in 1957 resulted in the destruction of many county records.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (0.4%) is water.

Adjacent counties

* Carter County (north)
* Lawrence County (east)
* Morgan County (south)
* Rowan County (west)

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 6,748 people, 2,638 households, and 1,925 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 3,107 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 99.04% White, 0.03% Black or African American, 0.07% Native American, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.01% from other races, and 0.83% from two or more races. 0.59% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 2,638 households, of which 33.40% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 60.00% were married couples living together, 9.70% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.00% were non-families. 24.70% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.00% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.02.

People of British ancestry form an overwhelming plurality in Elliott County.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 25.40% under the age of 18, 9.10% from 18 to 24, 27.50% from 25 to 44, 24.70% from 45 to 64, and 13.40% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 95.20 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.50 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $21,014, and the median income for a family was $27,125. Males had a median income of $29,593 versus $20,339 for females. The per capita income for the county was $12,067. About 20.80% of families and 25.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 30.50% of those under age 18 and 26.40% of those age 65 or over.

Politics

Elliott County had voted for the Democratic Party's nominee in every presidential election since the county was formed in 1869, up until the 2016 presidential election. This was the longest streak of any county voting Democratic in the United States. It was also the last majority-White Southern rural county never to have voted for a Republican in any presidential election until 2016. As of 2024, Donald Trump remains the only Republican to have ever won Elliott County in presidential elections.

According to interviews from residents of the county, this overwhelming Democratic support was primarily due to long-standing tradition to vote Democratic passed down through generations, as well as an appreciation for big government following FDR's New Deal. Even in nationwide Republican landslides like 1972 and 1984, when Republican candidates won the state of Kentucky overall with over 60% of the vote, Elliott County voted 65.3% and 73.4% Democratic, respectively. Reagan, in particular, only performed 3% better in the county in 1984 than 1936 GOP nominee Alf Landon, despite the fact that Reagan won everywhere but Minnesota and Washington, D.C., and a national popular vote swing of 41%, while Landon lost every state but Maine and Vermont.

It was Democrat John Kerry's strongest county in Kentucky in 2004. With white Americans making up 99.04% of its population, Elliott County was the second-whitest in the country to vote for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, the whitest being Mitchell County, Iowa. Obama garnered 61.0% of the vote, while Republican John McCain received 35.9%. In fact, Elliott County provided Obama with the highest percentage of the vote in all of Kentucky, although this was nonetheless the worst Democratic performance in the county since its founding.

Obama would again win the county in 2012, his only such victory in the staunchly conservative region of rural Eastern Kentucky. However, he eked out only a narrow 49.4% plurality over Mitt Romney's 46.9%, thus ending an over century-long streak of Democratic landslides in Elliott County. Reflecting the increasing rural–urban divide of modern American politics, Obama's strongest county in the state was instead Jefferson County, home to Louisville—the most populous city in Kentucky—which he won by a comfortable 54.7–43.6% margin. The county is part of the Bible Belt, and according to interviews in 2013, residents were socially conservative on issues such as abortion and LGBT rights. In 2022, Elliott County voted for Kentucky Amendment 2, which would have explicitly removed a constitutional right to abortion, by a 347-vote (roughly 17.91%) margin, with 1,142 "yes" votes (roughly 59%) and 795 "no" votes (roughly 41.04%) - indicating continued anti-abortion sentiment in Elliott County into the early 2020s, although not by the landslide 20%+ margins seen in many rural counties further south in Kentucky closer to Tennessee.

In 2013, most Elliot County residents believed that Hillary Clinton would easily carry the county if she ran in 2016, even though a more liberal Democrat might lose the county. Instead, Elliott County's hard swing towards the Republican Party continued in 2016, when it voted for Republican Trump over Clinton by a 70.1–25.9% margin, decisively ending the Democratic Party's 140-year victory streak. Trump received about 900 more votes in the county, nearly twice the number of voters that Romney won. In contrast, Clinton received about 400 fewer votes than Obama. Despite Trump's victory, Democratic candidates for concurrent downballot offices managed to carry the county. In the Senate race, Democratic nominee Jim Gray won 56.0% of the county's vote to Republican Senator Rand Paul's 44.0%. In addition, Democratic State Rep. Rocky Adkins, a Sandy Hook native whose state house district includes the entire county, was reelected and took 86% of the vote in Elliott.

Trump won the county again in 2020 with a larger 74.99% of the vote. By 2024, Trump managed to make Elliott an even deeper shade of red, getting 80% of the vote, a figure that once was more commonly associated with fiercely Unionist Kentucky counties like Jackson and Clay. Overall, Elliott County shifted to the right from 2012 to 2024 by 64 percentage points, representing one of the strongest such rightward shifts for any county in the country.

Elliott was one of two counties in Kentucky (the other being nearby Wolfe County) that had voted against Senator Mitch McConnell in all of his elections, though this streak would also come to an end in 2020. It also had never voted for Representative Hal Rogers in any of his contested elections until 2018, when he won 54.5% of the county's vote over Democratic nominee Kenneth Stepp. Until the 2020s, the county remained reliably Democratic in state-level races, voting for the party's entire slate in the 2015 and 2019 statewide elections. However, in 2023, the county voted Republican in every state-level election on the ballot except for the governor. Despite this, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear's vote share still decreased in Elliott County, from 59.27% in 2019 to 53.48% in 2023, despite him winning by a higher margin statewide compared to four years previously.

On Election Day 2012, Elliott County had the lowest percentage of registered Republicans in Kentucky, with just 215 of 5,012 (4.2%) registered voters affiliating with the GOP. By October 2016, this proportion had increased to 429 out of 5,213 (8.2%). In April 2019, it stood at 562 of 5,318 (10.6%). By June 2022, this share had nearly doubled, with 1,007 registered Republicans out of 5,243 registered voters (19.2%). As of May 2024, 1136 out of 4947 (23%) of the county's voters are registered Republicans.Commonwealth of Kentucky - State Board of Elections Voter Registration Statistics Report
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Elected officials

State and Federal

County

Judicial

Communities

City

* Sandy Hook (county seat)

Unincorporated communities

* Ault
* Bascom
* Beartown
* Bell City
* Bigstone
* Blaines Trace
* Bruin
* Brushy Fork
* Burke
* Clay Fork
* Cliffside
* Culver
* Devil Fork
* Dewdrop
* Dobbins
* Edsel
* Eldridge
* Fannin
* Fannin Valley
* Faye
* Fielden
* Forks of Newcombe
* Gimlet
* Gomez
* Green
* Halcom
* Ibex
* Isonville
* Little Fork
* Little Sandy
* Lytten
* Middle Fork
* Neil Howard's Creek
* Newcombe
* Newfoundland
* Ordinary
* Roscoe
* Shady Grove
* Sarah
* Sideway
* Spanglin
* Stark
* Stephens
* The Ridge
* Wells Creek
* Wyatt

See also

* National Register of Historic Places listings in Elliott County, Kentucky

References

External links

The Year of Plenty, children's historical fiction set in Elliott County

The Kentucky Highlands Project

Elliott County Chamber of Commerce

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Kentucky counties
1869 establishments in Kentucky
Populated places established in 1869