 It voted for the GOP Presidential nominee in every election between 1856 and 2004 except that of 1912 when the Republican Party was mortally divided and Progressive Theodore Roosevelt carried the county with a majority of the vote over conservative incumbent William Howard Taft.The gradual shift of the GOP towards white Southern Evangelicals, however, has led the generally moderate electorate of Kane and the other “collar counties” to trend towards the Democratic Party.In 2008, Illinois-bred Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry Kane County since Franklin Pierce in 1852, and the first ever to win an absolute majority of the county's vote (the previous two Democratic winners, Pierce and James K. Polk in 1844 had both gained only pluralities due to strong Free Soil votes).