During the past 140 years there have been 36 presidential elections. Bond
County residents have voted Republican in all but five of those elections.
However, this marathon Republican voting spree began with a razor-thin
victory for Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
In that crucial presidential election year, Lincoln defeated U.S. Sen.
Stephen Douglas in Bond County by just six votes.
This was actually quite remarkable because most of the surrounding counties
voted heavily for Douglas.
Voting results are in the book "Illinois Elections, 1818-1990," edited by
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey. The election records show the
following:
Bond County gave Abraham Lincoln, the Republican, 987 votes. Stephen
Douglas, the Democratic candidate, received 981 votes.
John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, received 25
votes. There were two votes for John C. Breckinridge, candidate of the
Southern Democrats.
Lincoln was opposed to the extension of slavery to new states and
territories. Douglas favored "popular sovereignty." He wanted to allow
territories applying for statehood to determine whether they would be slave
states.
The Southern Democrats supported federal protection of slavery in the
territories and won most of the votes in the South. The Constitutional Union
Party was strong in certain areas of the South.
Nationally, Lincoln was elected by a good-sized margin in the Electoral
College. However, in the popular vote he received 39.82 percent, with
Douglas getting 29.46 percent. Breckinridge tallied 18.09 percent and Bell
got 12.61 percent.
Bond County gave Lincoln a slim victory in 1860, but most surrounding
counties voted against Lincoln.
Fayette County gave Douglas a solid 61.5 percent of its vote. Clinton County
gave Douglas a similiar victory. In Montgomery County, Douglas won 57.9
percent of the vote. In Madison County, Lincoln won, but only by a slim
margin of less than one percent.
One reason Lincoln squeaked out a victory in Bond County was the strong
support of Lincoln by the Greenville Advocate, founded just two years
earlier.
The state of Illinois voted for Lincoln, giving him 50.69 percent of the
vote. Lincoln won big in Cook County, winning there with 59.2 percent of the
vote. However, it is interesting to note that in 1860 Cook County certainly
didn't dominate statewide elections. In the 1860 election the total vote in
Cook County was only about 12 times greater than the vote total of 1,995 for
Bond County.
The Civil War began shortly after Lincoln's election. The war was still
under way (but nearing its end) when Lincoln was re-elected in 1864.
In that election Bond County gave Lincoln a big victory. He got 61.8 percent
of the vote, compared to just 38.2 percent for the Democratic candidate,
Gen. George B. McClellan.
Nationally, Lincoln won a big re-election victory, getting 55.02 percent of
the vote.
Remarkably, however, counties surrounding Bond continued their strong
opposition to Lincoln. This was in spite of the fact that Union forces were
moving toward victory in the Civil War.
Fayette County gave McClellan a hefty 61.4 percent of its votes. Montgomery
County gave him 60.6 percent. Clinton County's vote was closer, with the
Democratic candidate getting 51.3 percent.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in this area was the vote in Madison County,
which had narrowly supported Lincoln in 1860. This time Madison County voted
against re-electing Lincoln, giving the Democratic candidate 51 percent of
its vote.
To sum up, Bond County voted for Lincoln in both 1860 and 1864. None of the
counties surrounding Bond County voted for Lincoln both times and all but
one of them voted against him both times.
Bond County continued after the Civil War as a Republican county.
In the 100 years between 1860 and 1960 Bond County voted Republican in every
presidential election, except for two.
In 1912 Bond County gave Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, a slim victory over
incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft. However, this almost
certainly happened because of the third party candidacy of former Republican
President Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson got 1,278 votes, Taft got 1,152 and
Roosevelt received 725. Wilson was elected nationwide.
By 1932 the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Depression. Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate, was elected in a landslide over
Republican President Herbert Hoover.
However, in Bond County Roosevelt got a much more narrow victory, winning
with 52.2 percent of the vote.
Nationally, Roosevelt went on to be elected three more times. Bond County,
however, turned strongly against Roosevelt.
In 1936, when FDR was winning re-election by a landslide, Bond County voters
gave him only 45.2 percent of their votes.
Things were even worse for Roosevelt in 1940. Nationally, he was elected to
a third term, but Bond County residents gave Republican candidate Wendell
Willkie 57.4 percent of their votes.
Things went even further downhill for Roosevelt in 1944. The nation's voters
gave him a fourth term, but in Bond County Republican candidate Thomas E.
Dewey got 58.2 percent of the vote.
In 1948 Bond County residents once again voted for a Republican for
President. They supported Thomas E. Dewey over President Harry Truman. Dewey
got 53 percent of the vote. Nationally, Truman was elected.
Although Bond County voted Democratic only twice between 1860 and 1960, the
county has voted Democratic in three presidential elections since 1964.
In that year Lyndon Johnson defeated Republican Barry Goldwater. In Bond
County Johnson got 55.5 percent of the vote.
Then in 1992 and again in 1996 Bill Clinton, a Democrat, won nationally and
in Bond County. In both elections, however, the third party candidacy of
Ross Perot tended to skew normal voting patterns.
During the past 40 years the Democratic candidate came quite close to
winning in the county in a couple other elections.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter came within one half of one percent of defeating
Republican Gerald Ford in Bond County. Carter was elected.
Then in 1988 Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis came surprisingly close to
defeating Republican George Bush. Bond County gave 3,608 votes to Bush and
3,459 to Dukakis. Bush was elected president.
Over the past 140 years the all-time record voter turnout in the county for
a presidential election was in 1940 -- on the eve of the nation's entry into
World War II. A whopping 8,285 people made it to the polls.
The next highest total was in 1936, when the turnout was 7,836.
The turnout hovered at or somewhat above 7,500 in 1976, 1980 and 1992.
The total vote in the county jumped dramatically after women were given the
vote. For example, the turnout totaled 3,992 in 1908. By 1916 women had been
allowed to vote in Illinois and the Bond County vote total jumped to 6,714.
The Prohibition Party was a strong third party in Bond County for many
years. The high point was in 1904 when its presidential candidate, Silas
Swallow, got 9.05 percent of the county's vote. The highest percentage for
the Socialist Party was 2.1 percent for candidate Eugene Debs in 1908.
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