As a historically Yankee rural county, Iroquois County has always been powerfully Republican. Although the county normally voted Democratic in Second Party System-era elections, since Iroquois County was reduced to its current borders by the creation of Kanakee County it has voted Republican in all, bar three, Presidential elections. The first of these was when the Republican Party was mortally divided between Progressive former President Theodore Roosevelt and conservative incumbent President William Howard Taft, and Roosevelt carried Iroquois County in a three-way race. The other two cases – the only times Iroquois County has voted Democratic – were in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 and 1936 landslides during the Great Depression.