query: How large is King County, Washington?
passage: King County, Washington
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 2,307 square miles (5,980km2), of which 2,116 square miles (5,480km2) is land and 191 square miles (490km2) (8.3%) is water.[16] King County has nearly twice the land area of the state of Rhode Island. The highest point in the county is Mount Daniel at 7,959 feet (2,426 meters) above sea level.
passage: 1988 United States presidential election in Washington (state)
King County, home to the city of Seattle and its surrounding suburbs, was and is by far the most heavily populated county in the state, and a bellwether county for the state as a whole. In every presidential election since Washington achieved statehood, the candidate who won King County also won Washington state as a whole. While the city of Seattle had long leaned Democratic, the surrounding suburbs had long leaned Republican, making King County a swing county, and thus Washington state a swing state. In 1976, moderate Republican Gerald Ford had carried Washington state 50–46, while winning King County 51–45. In the 1984 Republican landslide, Ronald Reagan won King County by a 52–47 margin. However Michael Dukakis in 1988 won King County by a 54–45 margin, a raw vote difference of 59,089 votes, providing more than the entire 29,681 raw vote difference by which he carried Washington state as a whole. The 1988 result started a yet-unbroken Democratic winning streak in King County, and would prove to be the start of a long-term dramatic shift toward the Democratic Party in the county and thus in the state as a whole. As the city of Seattle grew, and the suburbs continued abandoning the GOP and increasingly trended Democratic in the 1990s and 2000s, King County would be transformed from a swing county prior to 1988 into a Democratic stronghold; twenty years later, in 2008, Democrat Barack Obama would receive over 70% of the vote in King County. The Democratic dominance in King County that began in 1988 would solidify Washington as a strong blue state in the modern era.