How Illinois has voted in every presidential election since 1976

It is often said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. When it comes to elections, that is true—but it's not true often enough that we know what to expect at the ballot box.

Stacker takes a look at how Illinois voted in each election since 1976, according to data from MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

States like Hawaii and Rhode Island have been Democratic strongholds for decades, Massachusetts has been voting steadily blue since 1960, and Washington D.C. has never backed a Republican candidate.

On the other side of the political aisle, Alaska has voted Republican in every election but one. Idaho, Kentucky, and Indiana have been Republican for generations, while Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming have been voting red nearly every chance they can.

Southern states have been moving as a powerful block for ages, voting Democratic from the Reconstruction after the Civil War until the 1960s, when Southerners opposed civil rights legislation. The Republican Party stepped in with what's known as its Southern strategy to woo those votes, adding an emphasis on the traditional nuclear family, traditional roles for women, and evangelical religion to simmering racial issues.