It had been the ‘most reliably Democratic county in America.’ It went for Trump.

Elliott County in Eastern Kentucky, which has voted for a Democrat for president in every election for 144 years, overwhelmingly went for Donald Trump.

Voters in the county favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, by a vote of 2,000 to 740.

The county’s Democratic roots still run deep, though. Elliott was one of only 7 Kentucky counties to support Democrat Jim Gray over Republican Sen. Rand Paul in the race for U.S. Senate. It favored Gray 1,477 to 1,157, even as Paul easily won re-election to his seat.

Elliott County remains overwhelmingly Democratic in its registration, with 4,580 registered Democrats and 429 registered Republicans.

Elliott County has drawn national attention before for its longest-in-the-nation streak of voting for the Democratic nominee for president in every election since the county was incorporated in 1869. It has been called the “most reliably Democratic county in America.”

In 2008, 61 percent of Elliott County voters supported Barack Obama for president. That was even after the county had overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton in her primary against the eventual two-term president. In 2012, Elliott County voters narrowly went for Obama over Mitt Romney.

But Democratic voters there favored Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in Kentucky’s Democratic primary in May, a primary that saw Clinton just hold on to win the state. In the primary, Clinton won the state’s population centers — Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky — while Sanders won most of the rural counties, performing especially well in areas hard hit by the decline of coal.

This story was originally published November 10, 2016 at 10:36 AM with the headline "It had been the ‘most reliably Democratic county in America.’ It went for Trump.."