sentences:  Currently Sampson County leans strongly towards the Republican Party in presidential elections.No Democratic presidential candidate has gained an absolute majority of Sampson County's votes in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter did so in 1980, although Bill Clinton won a plurality in 1992 and Bob Dole's 1996 plurality was just ninety-one votes out of over seventeen thousand.Historically the county was unusual in the South in turning strongly towards the Republican Party between the 1890s and World War II – a time when most of the region was solidifying as the overwhelmingly Democratic "Solid South".