Only 9 counties have picked every presidental winner since 2000; Washington Post series on them starts in Wisconsin

Map by The Washington Post from Open Street Map

Door County, Wisconsin, with a 2020 census population of 30,066, is one of nine U.S. counties or county equivalents that have backed every winner of the presidential elections starting in 2000. Unlike the other eight counties, it's in what is expected to once again be a key battleground state, and that may be a reason that The Washington Post featured it first in a series that will look at each of the nine counties.

The other eight bellwether counties are:

• Kent, in Delaware (President Biden's home state, but not his home county or the site of his beach home)
• Minnesota's Clay County (across the Red River from Fargo, N.D.)
• Montana’s Blaine, the most rural of the nine, with about 7,000 people
• New Hampshire’s Hillsborough (including Manchester, the state's largest city)
• New York’s Essex and Saratoga (Warren, between them, would have made the list if Biden had recieved 58 more votes there)
• Virginia’s independent city of Chesapeake (independent cities are not part of counties)
• Washington’s Clallam (the westernmost county in the contiguous U.S.)

Immigration has become an issue in Door County. An influx of Hispanics could relieve the county's labor shortage, but some voters "say they perceive migrants as lawbreakers who could be dangerous," the Post's Danielle Paquette and Sabrina Rodriguez report, noting that a proposed affordable-housing development was rejected because of public opposition that included anti-immigration elements.

"The discussions are playing out in a region where the stark political split offers a telling gauge of the national mood," the Post reports. "Door County is about 93 percent white, according to the latest census data, with Hispanics, the second-largest ethnic group, representing 4 percent of the population. There’s no decisive political majority, and independents command significant sway."

The story quotes a wide range of Door County residents and has an interactive feature for looking up how your county has voted in the last six presidential elections.