Did they narrowly miss out on voting for the Democrat party in 2020? That means, watch Bucks and Northampton counties. These counties' national bellwether status might not ring true in 2016, though, because Illinois is one of Obama's home states. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "How many counties are in the United States? This year with Mr Trump winning the county handily, not only did Vigo County Republicans keep their seats, a "red tide" similar to what transpired in Ottawa and Valencia counties saw Republican members take positions such as county judge, treasurer, clerk and recorder. 2016 primary winners: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Latest voter registration totals: Democrats: 230,401Republicans: 211,817No Party Affiliation: 102,635Others: 16,526. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 258,050Unaffiliated: 228,638Republicans: 185,694Libertarian: 3,711. This was important for candidates since the presidential candidate's campaign would normally foot the bill. So, for our purposes, a swing county would have voted as follows: There are 80 such counties. Suggest an improvement, report an issue, "People are more likely to identify with a party than we've seen before," says Harrison Kreisberg of BlueLabs Analytics, a polling firm that works with progressive and Democratic interests. If Clinton is going to win Utah, she will need to squeeze out as many Democrats as is possible in Salt Lake, and maybe win young people in those college towns, including Logan in Cache County (Utah State). 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. Their concerns are real. Bellwether counties: Where in America do voters nail it? Of course, bellwethers are bellwethers until they aren't. Cable news loves to point to Vigo County, Indiana on election night coverage because Indiana is one of the first two states to close its polls and it has . David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, toldthe Wall Street Journal that the failure of typical bellwether counties reflects"the overall trend that we are seeing toward greater geographic polarization.". Watauga has gone for. However, its bellwether status is by no means guaranteed in future elections. Go on, look them up! In 2020, a single county in the setkept its perfect recordby tallying a win for Biden. Washoe County2016 caucus winners: Sanders, Trump2012: Obama 51%, Romney 47%, Latest voter registration totals:Republican: 105,410Democrats: 102,422Unaffiliated: 53,048Others: 19,815. Where did all the bellwether counties go? - HotAir 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. But demographic change appears to have tipped the county slightly more in Democrats' direction. The 13 Bellwether Counties That Could Decide The Election. In fact, they became even more Republican the average bellwether county from 1980 to 2016 voted 18.2 points to the right of the nation. 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). In fact, of the 19 pivot counties across America to correctly pick the president every time over the past 10 election cycles, only one - Clallam County in Washington state - saw a majority back Joe Biden for president. The Art Of The Vote: Who Designs The Ballots We Cast. Fifth, it listswhether each candidate's politicalparty won seats in the House of Representatives which occurred withObama andTrump, but not Biden. His win in 2012 was by a smaller margin in Forsyth County than in 2008, as the state flipped back to Mitt Romney. Here's why. Here, local Republican candidates fuelled by Mr Trump's firebrand style almost wiped Democrats off the local political map. Allegheny (Pittsburgh) is also key for Democrats. They simply vote on merit. Based on our research, the claim that these five statistics about Obama, Trump and Biden appear to discredit election results is MISSING CONTEXT. Their hopes are real. Nobody forgot about politics.". Other counties to watch: Counties where Clinton has to drive up the score include Bexar (San Antonio), Hidalgo (McAllen) and Travis (Austin). Latest voter registration totals:Undeclared: 105,097Republicans: 87,763Democrats: 77,383. Arguably, it was 2016 and not 2020 when bellwether counties first showed signs of falling by the wayside, given their dramatic swing to the right in that election. Contributors wanted 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. They're just facts about the vote. (The highest value being again 66.1%). But its population has steadily diversified, including a surge in Asian and Latino voters, which has made it more competitive Obama carried it twice. The trick, for Trump, is to hold down her winning percentage here in a county that has nearly a quarter of a million registered Republicans. Demographics (84) This website merely reports on substantial allegations made by well-known public figures, elected officials, members of congress, and their legal teams, and will correct errors when notified. 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. By Dasha Burns, Antonia Hylton, Shaquille Brewster and Benjy Sarlin. 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. Valencia County is home to a string of towns along the banks of the Rio Grande river in an otherwise largely arid stretch of desert south of Albuquerque. Yes, another Hillsborough! The Biden campaign has run ads in the Toledo broadcast market, which conveniently covers part of Michigan, too. running an event, collecting and distributing information, Canvassing: Alarming Results in Multiple States, Identify Electoral Fraud Using Trend Analysis, The Curious Case of the 2020 Voting Rate Blowouts, How to Predict Election Results Using Registration Data, The Counties Where Votes and Party Registrations Don't Align, Investigating the Large Democrat Vote Increases, USEIPs Election Fraud Data Analytics Guide, 2000 Mules: Video Evidence of Ballot Trafficking, Voting Machines Lacking EAC Accreditation, List of Legislators Supporting Election Audits, Forensic Analysis of Mesa County Machine Images, A Vote Trafficking Parable, by David K. Clements, Identifying Electoral Fraud Using Trend Analysis, View the County & Local Organizing Playbook, Find the latest updates on our Telegram channel, Bellwether counties are not just statistical curiosities, The odds of 21 (out of 22) of these counties getting it wrong is, We have identified and analyzed the best of the best bellwether counties at predicting an election outcome, and examined their trends in 2020. 3. Latestvoter registration totals:Democrats: 521,881Republicans: 248,934Unaffiliated: 66,775Other: 45,567. Will That Last?]. This well-educated, high-income and increasingly diverse D.C. exurb (Asians and Latinos togther make up a third of this county) went for Obama twice and roughly reflected the statewide margin. Joe Biden (631) Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 480,926Republicans, 323,870Unaffiliated: 229,298Others: 65,281. At the presidential level, Republicans havent won Oakland County since 1992, though George W. Bush twice came very close. Take the time to ponder and realize that this is no mean feat! It did go for John Kerry in 2004, though, when Bush won the state, so let's see if Monroe retains its bellwether status beyond two elections or if it was just a cheeseburger in paradise. Scott Walker all three times his name appeared on the ballot. What are the odds of getting 21 heads or 21 tails? This county, home to Reno, borders California and is at the opposite end of the state from Las Vegas. 2016 primary winners: Clinton, Cruz2012: Obama 53%, Romney 46%, Latestvoter registration totals:Democrats: 101,967Republicans: 75,145Unaffiliated:65,344Libertarian: 1,022. In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost. We highlighted the counties that voted the highest for the Democrat party in 2008 as it is a clear indicator of their propensity to vote for the Democrat party. 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 . In Valencia County, Mr Trump beat Mr Biden by six points more than he defeated Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. 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. Sitting at the same Kozy Corners diner table that president Barack Obama ate from when on his own re-election campaign in July 2012, Mr Brikmanis, a lawyer, believes local Democrats' failure to get votes is also linked to the broader economic decline being experienced by rural and rust belt communities across the Midwest. The Most Important Question About the 2020 Election It gets a lot more interesting. A majority of voters here had backed the eventual winner of presidential elections every time since 1964. Key Counties: The race here is not binary, so watching the margins in the biggest counties will be important. Trump remained very strong with white voters without a college degree in 2020, helping him win Iowa and Ohio by comfortable margins and remain competitive in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It came close to reflecting the statewide vote in 2012. (From a purely random statistics perspective, there should only be 1 or 2 standing. More than one-in-four votes cast for Obama and Romney in 2012 came from Hillsborough. That might mean needing to factor that in by a couple points. The Bellwether County to Watch in Pennsylvania . There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States, but in presidential elections they are not all created equal. We relaxed the constraint by introducing the concept of a swing county, i.e. Especially since Biden received million more votes than Obama did in 2008. Only one of them, Washington state's Clallam County, backed. Democrats also have to win big in Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Guilford (Greensboro), Durham and Buncombe (Asheville). According to an analysis of bellwether states and counties by Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, "Vigo County, Indiana is the most prominent bellwether of presidential. We wanted to provide an easy-to-use guide of which counties to keep tabs on that could tell you how states might vote that are crucial to the election. New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 105,724Republicans: 70,060Unaffiliated: 15,141Other: 6,079. The question is, how much did they get it wrong by? But there was only one county Clallam, Washington which voted Democrat. Or, if you dont have enough time, how many of the top 10 switch counties, which overwhelmingly voted Democrat in 2008 (with a percentage Democrat vote over 58% ! From 1980 through 2016, there were19 counties that consistently voted for the eventual president. The percentage of people with college degrees here is two-thirds higher than the rest of the state. How could 16 out of 17 bellwether counties predict a Trump win - Quora "They followed through the whole four years. Dont simply gloss over this. And as was true in 2016, those counties voted substantially to the right of the nation. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 316,586Republicans: 258,725No Party Affiliation: 206,457Others: 22,695. 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. The exurban county has seen a surge in minority voters in fact, non-Hispanic whites only constitute 62 percent of the vote, and thats made the area more competitive. In 2008, Obama carried this county outside Detroit by 9 percentage points but that winning margin was cut in half in 2012 with Michigan native Mitt Romney leading the GOP ticket. For the mathematically-minded: the table below shows that county outcomes do loosely follow a random outcome, up until a point. Putting names to archive photos, The children left behind in Cuba's mass exodus, In photos: India's disappearing single-screen cinemas. Just a tiny fraction of them truly matter. In other words, only 54 percent of bellwether counties from 1980 to 2012 kept their status in 2016. Read about our approach to external linking. Not anymore. Ohio (18 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. Trump also needs to overperform in Macomb, another Detroit suburb, which narrowly went for Obama in 2012. Their ability and sensitivity to dramatically switch parties in 2000, 2008 and 2016, is outstanding. Marcela Stewart speaks to a voter at an event to encourage minority voter turnout n Cutler Bay, Fla., on Sunday. Here are the counties that consistently voted more than 50% for the winning party since the 2000 election: To make things a little more interesting we will relax the constraints a little to include modern bellwether counties, that is, counties that have voted for the winning candidate since 1992. Bellwether counties are mostly a matter of chance and are now - USAPP From his tweet: From 1984 through 2016, spanning presidential elections, seventeen US counties in several states ad voted for the winning presidential candidate in an astounding 148 of 153 times including 100% five times for five different presidents: Advertisement - story continues below 1984 Reagan 1996 Clinton 2000 Bush 2012 Obama 2016 Trump Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton need to shore up their bases here in a place where there are more unaffiliated voters than Republicans or Democrats and major party registration is at near parity. 2016 winners: Bernie Sanders (Democratic caucus); Ted Cruz (GOP state convention) . 03:30. It almost became religious.". Subscribe to breaking updates In 2008, Obama received69,498,516 votes, per the Federal Election Commission. 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. Ottawa County wasn't the only swing county to get the outcome wrong this time around. On Dec. 14, President-elect Joe Biden secured his victory after he received306 votes from the Electoral College, per USA TODAY. Republican county chairman Michael Barnett said hed celebrate if Trump could do better than Romneys 41 percent total here in 2012. Bellwether counties in swing states show that the demographic gulf between the Democrats' more urban coalition and the Republicans' base of rural and blue collar whites is poised to grow ever . "We had to quietly move our parade," she says. Bucks has three times the voters than its neighboring county to the north. 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. Of the 19 counties that had a perfect record between 1980 and 2016, all but one voted to reelect President Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden in both the national popular vote and in nearly. This article is part of a series on Identifying Electoral Fraud Using Trend Analysis. They were particularly representative in 2012, when the average 1980-to-2016 bellwether county was just 0.8 points more Democratic than the nation. An Inquiry of Bellwether Counties in US Presidential Elections, 1980-2016 Daniel Zimny-Schmitt1, Michael C. Harris2 1. "I said: 'I'm the chair of the Democratic Party,' and the gentleman looked at me and said: 'Oh, the enemy.'". But in 2020, 18 of these 19 bellwether counties voted for former President Donald Trump. University of New Hampshire . Dave Wasserman, who analyzes election data for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told the Wall Street Journal that ticket-splitting appeared to make "a fashion comeback in many places.". 9. 5. Three-in-four votes for President Obama in 2012 came from Clark County. "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. This is a fairly small county, but we couldn't resist the toll of this bellwether. Ventura County, California - two misses since 1920 (in 1976 and 2016). For a minute in this campaign, it looked like it could be a fairly close race in Texas, even within 5 points. But Northampton went closely with the statewide margin in 2012. Other counties to watch: Watch Atlanta and the suburbs. History suggests not: just two-thirds of historic bellwether counties. North Carolina (15 electoral votes) - Toss-up. Until this year. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 51%-48% - 2008: Obama 52%-47%. Still, the state's worth watching. He will need to cut into Clintons advantage here in North Carolinas second-most populous county since Clinton is likely to roll up the score in Democratic Mecklenburg County (Charlotte). Were not going to just give you the answer, since the significance of the result might be lost on you. View our How You Can Help page, or contribute via Published Nov. 8, 2016 at 5:30 a.m. It's whiter and less Hispanic than the rest of the state, but it has a higher share of residents with college degrees. There were 1.3 million voters, or a quarter of all the state's voters, in just eight counties in that stretch. Even combined, they represent only53 votes a fraction of the 538 total electoral votesor the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House. With demographic change in the Research Triangle area, though, it's possible for Clinton to win without this smaller county. 11. They are: Notice RANSOM, SARGENT, and MARSHALL in particular. Lets introduce a new concept: the quality of prediction. These counties were geographically clustered in the Midwest and in the Northeast. It will keep them entertained for hours, and you can tell them it is for a good cause. 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.". We know these counties are the best of the best at predicting the election winner. The Milwaukee suburb went for Obama by just 3 points in 2012, but went for George W. Bush in 2004 when Wisconsin was the closest state of that election, though it went for Democrat John Kerry. If it's close here, Georgia could be in play. That'sanother reason results of the contests might not have lined up. "It wasn't part of his strategy.". Due to health and time constraints of our original contributors and a lack of volunteers to replace them, we haven't been able to keep pace with the further reports and findings after May 2022, including the Nov 2022 Mid-Term Elections, during which, sadly, many of the same irregularities and potential fraud occurred. They are: Notice RANSOM, SARGENT, and MARSHALL in particular. Other swing counties to watch: Monroe and Calhoun. 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. Green Bays Brown County voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, then Barack Obama in 2008, then flipped to Mitt Romney in 2012. There are numerous theories about why it happened in 2020. But its not just demographic trends driving the loss of bellwether status. . Trump remained very strong with white voters without a college degree in 2020, helping him win Iowa and Ohio by comfortable margins and remain competitive in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Four years later, Caswell is still looking for a second act for its . The Americans who almost always predict the president With a total turnout. To get an idea as to whether Clinton could win it, watch Tarrant County. Learn about the anomalies, strange events, and eyewitness accounts surrounding the 2020 election. Concretely, a switch county would have voted for the following parties: (We ignore how they voted in 1996, 2004 and 2012 when the parties stayed the same.). Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. Republicans have paid some attention. The divisions were everywhere. Hamilton is ringed by heavily Republican Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, and it shares a border with Indiana, which is giving hope to GOP officials who think Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Help raise awareness within your community about the lingering, unresolved issues with election integrity. Here are the top 50 counties by Democrat voting percentage in 2008: How many of these counties swung back to the Democrat party in 2020? Kerry Sheridan/AFP/Getty Images Suburban Richmonds Henrico County was once a reliable GOP stronghold it went twice for George W. Bush and backed Bob McDonnell in his 2009 gubernatorial win. Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. Since only Clallam County voted Democrat in 2020, we know they all voted for the Republican party in 2020 and got it wrong. Its also loaded with government contractors and defense companies hit hard by the sequester. Shield icon by Freepik from flaticon.com. 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. List of election bellwether counties in the United States When sorted from the highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (at the 2008 election), we can see that there is 1 county that has a percentage Democrat vote greater than 60% at the 2008 election. Outstanding. Combinedwith general population growth, and this election had 27 million more participants. 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. Have information that relates to fraud in this election? Democrats need to drive up the margins in Fulton and DeKalb. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. As weve seen in the past two presidential elections, bellwether streaks can be suddenly ended thanks to Americas continually evolving political and demographic trends. Trump also needs to drive up margins in Republican-leaning Western counties like Kent (Grand Rapids) and Ottawa (on the shores of Lake Michigan). Other counties to watch: Also watch Luzerne (Wilkes-Barre). You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Bellwether 2016 Trump County, USA - POLITICO Magazine Arguably, it was 2016 and not 2020 when bellwether counties first showed signs of falling by the wayside, given their dramatic swing to the right in that election. Not a bad streak. 108,000 people. Stephen Starr is an Irish journalist and author who reported from the Middle East for a decade before moving to Ohio in 2018. The table shows the number of counties that voted for the winning candidate since the 1988 election. We identified and analyzed the best of the best bellwether counties at predicting an election outcome, and examined their trends in 2020. While Trump won every county in the state in the GOP primary, he posted his best result in Luzerne 77 percent. In the western mountains on the border with Tennessee, it's home to Boone, which includes Appalachian State. (The highest value being 66.1%), When sorted from the highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (at the 2008 election), we can see that there are 25 counties that have a percentage Democrat vote greater than 60% at the 2008 election. Lets rank these counties from highest to lowest Democrat voting percentages in the 2008 election. From 1980 through 2016, there were 19 counties that consistently voted for the eventual president. Re-doing the analysis we obtain 35 modern bellwether counties after the 2016 election. Will Democrats Rally Behind President Biden In 2024? Other counties to watch: Pima (where Tucson is). 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. 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. Relatively few counties across the nation switched party support in 2012, but Rockingham was one of them, flipping from Obama in 2008 to Romney. Mr Biden "never thought he was going to bring Ohio; he didn't put the effort in," says Democrat John Brikmanis from Oak Harbor in Ottawa County, and who ran unsuccessfully for the position of county clerk last month. 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). To make things more interesting we will only look at swing counties since the 2004 election. Donald Trump is highly unlikely to win here -- Democrats have a big voter registration advantage in this county where Trump owns one of his many homes. Ron Elving . Find Stephen on Twitter and Instagram, The Americans who almost always predict the president, China looks at reforms to deepen Xi's control, Historic ocean treaty agreed after decade of talks, Inside the enclave surrounded by pro-Russia forces, 'The nurses wanted me to feel guilty about my abortion, From Afghan TV fame to a US factory floor. In 2012, it had nearly half a million more voters in it than every other county in the state combined. We sorted the counties from highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (in the 2008 election). Voter Demographics (9). With each new section we relaxed the constraint, to include the most friendly Democrat voting counties in the country (based on the 2008 election). 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.