Of 20 presidential elections since 1928, how often have Democrats won Rhode Island?

a) 10

b) 12

c) 14

d) 16

Answer: d) Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama appears a shoo-in for Rhode Island’s four electoral votes, given its track record of supporting the party’s nominees in 16 of the past 20 elections.

Democratic nominees have won 10 of the 12 presidential contests since 1960, when state voters favored Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy by a wide margin. The party’s consistent winning ways began in 1928, when New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith kicked off a six-election victory streak.

Those elections, which signaled the Democrats’ growing dominance in state politics, were also two in which the party nominated Roman Catholics for president. Roman Catholics, many of them blue-collar “ethnics,” make up a larger portion of the population in Rhode Island than in any other state, and they long provided the foundation of Democratic successes in the state.

In tandem with more populous Massachusetts to the north, Rhode Island was in the vanguard of the transition of New England from its “Yankee Republican” traditions to the Democratic stronghold that it is today.

The only Republican presidential wins since 1928 came in national landslides by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. During the Democrats’ current five-election winning streak in the state, their nominees have won big, by an average of almost 23 percentage points. The 2004 Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, defeated President Bush in Rhode Island by 59 percent to 39 percent. In 2000, Al Gore, then the vice president, trounced candidate Bush by 61 percent to 32 percent.