Lexington · how this place’s counties split between candidates in each party’s presidential nominating contest, cycle by cycle. A primary is a contest inside one party, so it has no Democratic–Republican margin and is not part of the general-election record above.
Akashic reports votes cast, not delegates awarded. The two can disagree: Clinton led the 2008 national primary popular vote by less than half a point and did not win the nomination.
Primary returns are published at county grain and there is no roll-up above it. Each cell counts how many of this place’s counties a candidate led — a count of records, not a vote total. Who led the place as a whole is not knowable from these returns, because county rows carry a leader and a lead but no per-candidate votes.
Presidential nominating contests in Lexington, by party and cycle.
○no contest record — Akashic holds no result for that party and cycle here. It is not a claim that no contest was held. Telling apart a contest that was cancelled, one that went uncontested, and one simply not yet ingested needs a nominating-contest calendar, which is a separate ingest from results and does not exist yet.
Republican presidential primaries are not yet ingested — the Republican series runs from 1856 and is in scope. The row is kept so its absence is visible: a Democratic-only panel would otherwise read as though no one else held a contest.
Akashic carries 10 states for 2012 and 3 states for 2024. Cycles in which an incumbent president seeks renomination are thin by nature — few states run a contested primary — so a sparse column is politics, not a hole in the record.
County returns carry a leader and a lead over the runner-up, and nothing more. The full candidate field with vote shares is published at state grain — follow a cycle above to the state contest for it.
voter registration
Registered voters
By party of registration, over time
Party registration · 2024R+9.4
vs
Presidential vote · 2024R+32.2
Registration leans Republican; the presidential vote runs 23 points more Republican than the rolls.
Domestic migration in Lexington in Lexington: net domestic migration by year
Year
Net domestic migration
2011
+3,103
2012
−389
2013
+671
2014
+383
2015
+3,418
2016
+2,512
2017
+2,988
2018
+2,402
2019
+1,343
2021
+2,151
2022
+5,136
2023
+5,061
2024
+4,755
2025
+5,852
The Lexington DMA blends a large university population with surrounding rural counties, producing a media audience that swings measurably younger and more educated than Kentucky's statewide average.
Across the recorded series it reached a Democratic high of 21.5 points in 1964 and a Republican high of 33.6 points in 1972. Between 2020 and 2024 the market moved 4.2 points toward the Republican candidate; the 2024 margin was 32.2 points.
A population of 1,328,194, a 85% non-Hispanic-white share, and a median household income of $60,420 describe the market. The market's voting pattern over the last decade is most similar to that of Knoxville and Tri-Cities, TN-VA.
Akashic
Political twins — media markets
The media markets whose fingerprint — 2000–2024 trajectory, demographics, ancestry, religion — sits closest to this one, and why.
Twin score (0–100) = weighted cosine between tier-standardized fingerprints: presidential margins 2000–2024 with 12-yr trend and elasticity, ACS income, age, education, population and race, top reported ancestries, and religious adherence — chips name the closest-shared dimensions and the widest gap. Re-weight the groups in the twins explorer.
Compare two places, side by side
Twelve curated comparisons line up election history, demographics, and the divergence story for two places at a glance. Browse all comparisons →
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All citations released under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Akashic Intelligence.
Lexington, Kentucky. Akashic. https://akashic.app/dma/541/. Accessed May 20, 2026. License: CC BY 4.0.
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In 2024, Lexington, Kentucky voted Republican by 32.2 points (R+32.2), carried by the Republican candidate. Out of 608,322 votes cast, 201,068 went Democratic and 397,044 went Republican.
When did Lexington, Kentucky last vote Democratic?
The most recent presidential election in which Lexington, Kentucky voted Democratic was 1976.
How many people live in Lexington, Kentucky?
Lexington, Kentucky has a population of 1,328,194 according to the 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates from the US Census Bureau.
What is the median household income in Lexington, Kentucky?
Median household income in Lexington, Kentucky is $60,420 — below the national median of $80,734. The Kentucky state median is $63,726.
What is the political history of Lexington, Kentucky?
Akashic tracks 34 presidential elections in Lexington, Kentucky from 1892 to 2024. Of those, 9 went Democratic and 25 went Republican.
