 Like all of the Willamette Valley and Oregon Coast, Washington County was in its pre-Depression history strongly Republican.It voted for the Republican Presidential nominee in every election from Oregon statehood until 1930, except for the 1912 election when it supported Progressive candidate and former President Theodore Roosevelt.In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first Democrat to carry the county vote, and he repeated this in 1936 and 1940.