Whether or not these less diverse, industry-dependent communities can regain their bellwether status in four years' time remains to be seen. a suburban Philadelphia county that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 with 52.6% of the vote, and that . US election results: Why the most accurate bellwether counties were Joe Biden (631) Sumter County, . The US Election Integrity Plan contains further news, analysis, videos and practical guides to getting involved. The 10 Bellwether Counties That Show How Trump Is in Serious Trouble From Florida to Texas, the 6 Key Counties That Could Decide the - Vogue Lets rank these counties from highest to lowest Democrat voting percentages in the 2008 election. We sorted the counties from highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (in the 2008 election). North Carolina (15 electoral votes) - Toss-up Bellwether: Watauga In the western mountains on the border with Tennessee, it's home to Boone, which includes Appalachian State. Their finger was so tightly on the pulse of America that they not only picked the winner each time, but managed to accurately flip parties four times in that period. Bellwether counties are already extremely rare, but some bellwether counties are better than others at highlighting a change in sentiment. In 2008, Obama received69,498,516 votes, per the Federal Election Commission. In Valencia County, Mr Trump beat Mr Biden by six points more than he defeated Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Like Texas, Utah looks like it's receded from the battleground, so we don't include it in our 13 battlegrounds. It might be actually the best bellwether in the state, as it closely mirrored the statewide vote in both 2008 and 2012, but it has fewer voters than Jefferson, which we highlighted. Experts say that while traditional bellwether counties are whiter and less educated than the national average, there's no one element that unites them as political oracles. Still, the key for Democrats is Salt Lake, which gave Obama more than half his statewide vote there. The Fall of the Bellwether Counties - Election Fraud at a Glance Outstanding. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 51%-48% - 2008: Obama 52%-47%. What are your thoughts on this article? Trump, who has tended to run better with voters without college degrees, got trounced in the primary in Wake earlier this year. Just one Clallam County, Washington voted for President Joe Biden. In Valencia County, New Mexico, which had correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1952, Mr Trump won by 10 points; in Indiana's Vigo County, which backed every president bar two since 1888, he prevailed by 15 points. Wood County is a decent bellwether of the state: Mr. Trump carried it by eight points in 2016, matching his statewide margin. The probability is hard to comprehend, so lets figure it out for real. But that changed in 2016 when Trump made huge gains with white voters without a college degree. 2016 winners: Bernie Sanders (Democratic caucus); Ted Cruz (GOP state convention)2012: Obama 51%, Romney 46%, Latestvoter registration totals:Unaffiliated: 128,938Republicans: 111,374Democrats: 109,140Libertarian: 3,388. 10. (subject to censorship). We relaxed the constraint by introducing the concept of a swing county, i.e. The fact that there are fewer swing counties means that there are fewer potential bellwether counties. White voters without a college degree used to vote more like the country as a whole, which helps explain why these counties maintained their bellwether status for a long time. Hillsborough made up more than half that margin Obama won the county by 36,000 votes. The popular vote is not enough to win apresidential election; thatonly occurs with awin in the Electoral College. At one end of the I-4 corridor, Tampas Hillsborough County is a top bellwether -- since 1960, no candidate has won Florida without winning Hillsborough. Ottawa County wasn't the only swing county to get the outcome wrong this time around. That'sanother reason results of the contests might not have lined up. Ohio (18 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. Democrats need to drive up the margins in Fulton and DeKalb. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 53%-46% - 2008: Obama 56%-42%. Nineteen of these counties continued their streak in 2016 by voting for Trump, but the remaining 16 counties ended their bellwether streak by voting for Hillary Clinton. And notably, the 16 counties that lost their bellwether status in 2016 are more racially diverse (median of 46 percent non-Hispanic white, compared to 89 percent) and more highly educated (median of 27 percent of adults 25 or older with a bachelors degree or higher, compared to 22 percent) than the 19 counties that maintained their bellwether status. She also has to run up the score in Franklin (Columbus, home to Ohio State University). With a total turnout of 78%, Donald Trump won Ottawa County by a margin of 61% to 38%, improving his 2016 return by four points. Clinton needs to be closer to Obama's 57 percent in 2008 than his 55 percent in 2012. This suburban Denver county twice backed George W. Bush then twice supported Barack Obama. Texas likely isn't going Democratic, so we aren't including this in one of our 13 counties since it's less likely to decide the outcome of the presidential election. Here are the top 25 counties which voted over 60% for the Democrat party in 2008, and then voted Republican in 2016: There is no doubt these 25 counties heavily favor the Democrat party. Website Updates Paused (Biden, for example, won over 70%of the vote in Los Angeles County. John King has identified as key in the 2016 election. How could 16 out of 17 bellwether counties predict a Trump win - Quora Bellwether counties are important, and their significance should not be downplayed. What science tells us about the afterlife. (Independent parties will reduce the winning margin between the two major parties.) Lets introduce a new concept: the quality of prediction. And as was true in 2016, those counties voted substantially to the right of the nation. Split-Ticket Voters Helped Biden, Republicans in Nebraska, Maine, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. 11. In at least three of the past four elections, county differed . All rights reserved. That might mean needing to factor that in by a couple points. Ultimately, of course, Trumps strong performance in these counties didnt matter because of Bidens gains in the more highly educated suburbs of Milwaukee, Grand Rapids and Philadelphia. Latest voter registration totals:Undeclared: 105,097Republicans: 87,763Democrats: 77,383. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy lostall three states and won the White House, beating out future President Richard Nixon, according toSnopes. If Clinton can carry Henrico, it will help offset nearby Chesterfield County, the slightly larger and more Republican-oriented Richmond suburb. It's a largely rural area of 40,000 residents that's home to a nuclear power plant, a sprawling US National Guard training facility and islands that the British Royal Navy battled for and lost during the War of 1812. In the western mountains on the border with Tennessee, it's home to Boone, which includes Appalachian State. Hillary Clinton speaks during a rally at the Abraham Lincoln High School on Jan. 31 in Des Moines, Iowa. We organized this by poll-closing time (all in Eastern time for the latest poll-closing times in that state), so you can follow along as the night goes: 1. To do so, the popular vote winner of each county for every presidential election from 1980 through 2016 was tabulated and mapped, yielding 19 true bellwether counties for the period. One of the big four suburban collar counties ringing Philadelphia and the fourth-most populous county in the state Bucks is always competitive. Arizona (11 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. View our How You Can Help page, or contribute via who in 2016 won Caswell and other rural counties in North Carolina by tapping those feelings of abandonment. He is based in San Francisco and has also written for NBC News and The Hill. Their ability and sensitivity to dramatically switch parties in 2000, 2008 and 2016, is outstanding. We tried to pick counties that had a large enough population to matter some or if they just had a knack for picking that statewide winner. (Think about what it takes, and what is required for a county to always get the election right. (Needless to say that if the tables were reversed, we would hear no end of the significance of bellwether counties in the media.). The matters that way on their minds are real. Profiled by BBC News weeks before the 2020 election, locals said voters' political identities weren't always defined in strict party terms and that people would regularly pivot between parties from one election cycle to the next. The 10 Bellwether Counties That Show How Trump Is in Serious Trouble As the country's demographics shift and the rural-urban divide becomes more pronounced, the chances appear slim. A few counties in America are known as the "bellwether counties": Those locations that always end up voting for the candidate who ultimately wins in the presidential election. But when word got out, Trump supporters crashed it. Increased political polarization is another reason why fewer counties are consistently indicative of presidential results in recent years. Please keep this in mind as you continue to read through our bellwether analysis. Maricopa (home to Phoenix) is the most populous county in the state by far 60 percent of voters live here. Latest voter registration totals: Unaffiliated: 49,026Democrats: 40,563Republicans: 35,146. It has a slightly higher Hispanic population than Jefferson County 19 percent, according to the Census which makes it an uphill challenge for Donald Trump. Fact check: Trump-backed Michigan congressional candidate John - CNN The Atlantic wonders why we're still arguing about masks. We will only focus on the most recent elections to increase the pool of counties to analyze.). In economics, a 'bellwether' is a leading indicator of an economic trend. For that reason,Rogers M. Smith, a political scientistat the University of Pennsylvania, told Reutersthat "focusing on counties won as an indicator of the likely popular vote winner makes no sense whatsoever.". Demographically, the bellwether counties tended to be whiter, older, less . Those places will get the bulk of the presidential candidates time and their surrounding media markets will get the bulk of the television ad spending. there are signs that the progress he made there in 2016 winning the county by about 1.5 percentage points after Obama carried it by 16 points . Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Read about our approach to external linking. According to PolitiFact, voter turnout was66.2% in 2020 and 61.6% in 2008. North Carolina (15 electoral votes) - Toss-up. In Westmoreland County, Virginia - a small, rural community south of Washington DC that's failed to be a bellwether only twice since 1928, and is home to twice the number of African Americans than the national average - he beat Mr Biden by 16 points. In communities . The website FiveThirtyEight pointed out in 2021 that, in the 2016 election Trump won, opponent Hillary Clinton carried 16 of the 35 counties that had gone for the winner in every election from. Help raise awareness within your community about the lingering, unresolved issues with election integrity. The statistic on counties comes from a report bytheBrookings Institution on Nov. 10. Other counties to watch: Clinton has to drive up the margins in counties along the shores of Lake Erie, from Lucas (Toledo) to most notably Cuyahoga (Cleveland). We know these counties are the best of the best at predicting the election winner. Texas (38 electoral votes) - Likely Republican, Bellwether: Tarrant (Ft. Worth, Arlington). Watch this populous county, home to Manchester. It is also not as educated: Just 22 percent of adults 25 or older have a bachelors degree or higher, which is substantially lower than the 32 percent who have a college degree nationwide. "It gave suburban moderates an opportunity to vent their anger at Trump directly at the top of the ticket but continue to vote for the down-ballot Republicans they liked," he said. Democrats have a registration advantage in Iowas most populous county, and they are looking to run up Clintons numbers here as best as they can to offset expected losses in more conservative parts of the state. Here are the top 30 sorted by the highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote in 2008, thats the DPV 08 column: Find out at politico.com/2020-election/results. George W. Bush twice won comfortably in Forsyth County, the home of Winston-Salem. The second-most populous county in the state, northern Nevadas Washoe County is home to Reno. It all starts in Salt Lake, a place more liberal than you might think. By Randy Yeip and Stuart A. Thompson. These former bellwether counties are much whiter and less college-educated than the country as a whole. As such, the margins in bellwether counties became substantially more Republican even as the country only became a little more Republican, as you can see in the chart below. By Dasha Burns, Antonia Hylton, Shaquille Brewster and Benjy Sarlin. Vigo County, Indiana, is a serious bellwether county. On Dec. 1, formerAttorney General William Barr also told the Associated Pressthe U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no such evidence. (See the DPV 08 column in the image below.) Especially since Biden received million more votes than Obama did in 2008. Obama won comfortably here in 2008 but only squeaked to victory four years later. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. What does this mean for the nation's political-economic divide? Unfortunately, Github (now a Microsoft company) terminated this website's account on 13 Jan 2021 for "spreading misinformation", a violation of their terms, although no specific examples were given. Georgia (16 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. Clinton will win Democratic Clark County, the states population hub and home to Las Vegas. Ottawa County accurately predicted every president since 1964 until 2020, The Ottawa County commissioner says people are happy with Trump's accomplishments, Sunrise at East Harbor State Park, Ottawa County, Ohio, Minority voters who changed their minds about Trump, Chris Rock jokes about Oscars slap in Netflix show, Harry: I always felt different to rest of family, Everything Everywhere wins big ahead of Oscars, PM to end asylum claims from small boat arrivals, Street fighting in Bakhmut but Russia not in control, US-made cheese can be called 'gruyere' - court. No county more closely reflected Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012 than Monroe, home to Key West and the rest of the Keys. (i.e. While Trump won every county in the state in the GOP primary, he posted his best result in Luzerne 77 percent. "I think people were pretty happy with some of the things he's done, what he's been able to accomplish," says Mark Coppeler, a leading local Republican who was re-elected county commissioner last month. "I said: 'I'm the chair of the Democratic Party,' and the gentleman looked at me and said: 'Oh, the enemy.'". Bucks has three times the voters than its neighboring county to the north. Here are the concepts we have established so far: This is just the beginning. That includes 10 elections, including Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016. 2016 winners: Bernie Sanders (Democratic caucus); Ted Cruz (GOP state convention) . From 1980 through 2016, there were19 counties that consistently voted for the eventual president. More: Fact check: What's true and what's false about the 2020 election. "Mathematically impossible," wrote a user who shared it on Facebook. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 52%-46% - 2008: Obama 54%-44%. The pattern has become clear between the last two presidential elections and governor's race early results from rural counties show Republicans up, but Northern Virginia counties, especially Fairfax, have more than made up the difference. In other words, we are including more counties that are more likely to vote for the Democrat party. Below are 10 bellwether counties that could give signs as to how the electorate feels this cycle and in future races. "Biden did well in virtually all of the most populous counties in the U.S., which, along with a larger electorate explains why he defeated Donald Trump by over 7 million votes, despite carrying many fewer counties," Smith wrote. One of the highest income counties in the nation and a longtime GOP Midwestern stronghold, in recent years the suburban behemoth has begun trending toward Democrats -- not even Mitt Romney, who grew up here, could win it. Nobody forgot about politics.". The meme compares information about former President Barack Obama in 2008 and President Donald Trump and Biden in 2020. Wood County is a decent bellwether of the state: Mr. Trump carried it by eight points in 2016, matching his statewide margin. Not a bad streak. The best bellwether counties will consistently vote more than 50% for the winning party. What's more, in this year's election voters in leading bellwether counties didn't just come out for Donald Trump marginally; they backed him in droves. Statewide results: 2012: Romney 51%-49% - 2008: Obama 50%-49%. Kerry Sheridan/AFP/Getty Images Keep in mind that if we started the attrition from the 1980 election, there would still be 19 counties standing after the 2016 election. On Dec. 14, President-elect Joe Biden secured his victory after he received306 votes from the Electoral College, per USA TODAY. Marcela Stewart speaks to a voter at an event to encourage minority voter turnout n Cutler Bay, Fla., on Sunday. used to vote more like the country as a whole, huge gains with white voters without a college degree, just 303 counties were decided by single-digit margins in 2016, How The Federal Reserve Is The Shadow Branch Of The Government, Why Original Predictions About The War In Ukraine Were So Off. How Does The Electoral College Work And Is It Fair? Watch the margins in Story (Ames) and Scott (Davenport). More than half of all Americans livein just 143 counties, per the U.S. Census Bureau. You can find the answer by searching politico.com/2020-election/results. They simply vote on merit. What does Terre Haute know about America 2016? Latest voter registration totals: 216,082No party registration. The question is, how much did they get it wrong by? Arapahoe County. "We call them bellwethers because there's some fluke statistic, sometimes they are the right mix of different demographics. 'Forest defenders' begin week of action to block Atlanta police training center, Frogxit: Harry and Meghan get what they asked for, More Iranian schoolgirls fall ill, protests erupt, Russell Brand was challenged to give examples of MSNBC pushing misinformation (that was a BAD idea), Secretary of the Army Guarantees a Lot of Young Soldiers Will Die but Has the Right Thoughts and Feelings, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. 108,000 people. It came close to reflecting the statewide vote in 2012. I would love to see Clinton or Kaine hold a truckstop rally and appeal to those guys., Latest voter registration totals: 146,952No party registration. If you take a coin and flip it 22 times. This county voted with the popular vote each time. Republicans have paid some attention. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 51%-47% - 2008: Obama 53%-46%. These are places that are demographically strong for Republicans in the abstract, but might have had something that kept them closer to 50-50.". Want to dive deeper? Telegram Telegram 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. Watch the Philadelphia suburbs, and that means white women. It's the wrong question. It's also worth noting that some voters "split their tickets" between parties voting for Biden but also for Republicans in Congress, for example. Three-in-four votes for President Obama in 2012 came from Clark County. Suburban Denvers Arapahoe and Jefferson counties have moved in tandem for the past four elections. A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends.. But theres a blue collar contingent too who feel like theyre being ignored, according to county Democratic Chairman Marty Martinez. It will keep them entertained for hours, and you can tell them it is for a good cause. And notably, the 16 counties that lost their bellwether status in 2016 are more racially diverse (median of 46 percent non-Hispanic white, compared to 89 percent) and more highly educated (median of 27 percent of adults 25 or older with a bachelors degree or higher, compared to 22 percent) than the 19 counties that maintained their bellwether status. Home to Davenport, the states third-largest city, Scott County is also packed with independents who can swing either way. Clinton has to drive up the score in Philadelphia with its significant share of black voters. TIP: There are 25 counties with a Democrat percentage vote over 60%. If Trump can't win back or cut into margins in places like Prince William, Fairfax and Loudon, he likely can't win the state. But what if we told you that only 1 of these 22 counties voted for Biden in 2020? In each of the past three presidential elections, Arizona has had four consistently Democratic counties (Apache, Coconino, Pima, Santa Cruz) and 11 Republican ones (Cochise, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pinal, Yavapai and Yuma). In other words, only 54 percent of bellwether counties from 1980 to 2012 kept their status in 2016. 2023 BBC. 25 battleground counties to watch - POLITICO If Clinton's winning there, it means she's hitting marks with young voters. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? Trump needs to drive up the score in Cobb, which provided more votes than any other county for Mitt Romney in 2012. As long as a candidate wins enough electoral votes from other states, there is noreason it's impossible to win an election while losing Florida, Ohio, or Iowa. Nineteen of these counties continued their streak in 2016 by voting for Trump, but the remaining 16 counties ended their bellwether streak by voting for Hillary Clinton. A surge in African-American turnout helped deliver Cincinnatis Hamilton County to Obama in 2008, making him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson to carry the population hub of southwest Ohio. More than one-in-four votes cast for Obama and Romney in 2012 came from Hillsborough. "That didn't happen after 2016," she adds. We looked at the most recent swing counties and determined how many of the strongest Democrat voting counties in 2008, swung back to the Democrat party in 2020. Until this year. Trump appears likely to lose many moderate Republicans here but his message is also expected to appeal to white working class voters in Lower Bucks County, closer to the city. It's something Joan Day-Baker, chair of Valencia County's Democratic Party, has witnessed first-hand. What Can We Learn from Bellwether Counties in Swing States?
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