ELKINS — A significant moment took place in the Randolph County Clerk’s office Monday, as Randolph County, for the first time in many decades, officially became a “red county.”

As of Monday, the number of registered Republicans in the county surpassed the number of registered Democrats, a Randolph County Clerk’s office official told The Inter-Mountain Tuesday.

There are currently 6,244 registered Republican voters in the county, as opposed to 6,237 registered Democrat voters, a difference of just seven individuals, the official said.

“This is truly a historic moment,” Carolyn Jackson, of the Randolph County Republican Executive Committee, told The Inter-Mountain Tuesday. “Randolph County has been a Democratic stronghold for about 100 years. Things are changing. It shows that people are coming around to the Republican way of looking at things.”

Contacted Tuesday by The Inter-Mountain, Randolph County Democratic Party leaders did not respond for this article, but said an in-depth statement about the situation would be released soon.

Randolph County, and most of West Virginia, had been reliably Democratic in its voting from the Great Depression through the end of the 20th Century.

The Republican Party has made major inroads in the state and Randolph County since then, however.

In 2020, Ty Nestor became the first Republican delegate elected to represent the vast majority of Randolph County in 113 years, in what was then the 43rd legislative district. He was re-elected in 2022 to represent Randolph and Pocahontas counties in what had become the 66th district after the state’s redistricting process.

In 2022, Elias Coop-Gonzalez, a Republican, was elected as the other delegate for Randolph County, representing District 67.