At large Delaware is considered a bellwether in national elections. The state's voters supported the winning presidential ticket 12 times in a row and pursue ticket-splitting with rare relish in the local elections. In congressional elections, the state has embraced Republican Rep. Castle with large majorities.
Democrats are strong in Wilmington, the state's largest city.
Fifty years ago, almost half the state's residents lived here, but the city's 72,000 residents now cast only about 10 percent of Delaware's vote, largely because of migration to the booming suburbs. Dover, the capital, is set in the state's midsection, in Kent County. It, too, has a strong Democratic constituency. The GOP's strength lies in Wilmington's suburbs and south of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, in the poultry farms and coastal marshes of the Delmarva Peninsula. A string of beach resorts at the state's far southeast corner draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.