 About 8.6% of families and 11.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.3% of those under age 18 and 7.5% of those age 65 or over.As part of Yankee-settled Northern Illinois, Bureau County became powerfully Republican for the century following the Civil War.The only Democrat to carry the county between 1856 and 1988 was Franklin D. Roosevelt during his landslide 1932 victory, although Progressive Theodore Roosevelt did carry the county during the 1912 election when the GOP was mortally divided.