2016 bellwether counties

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). Bucks has three times the voters than its neighboring county to the north. BELLWETHER, a documentary web-series, will cover the 2016 presidential election through the eyes and experiences of voters in Terre Haute and Vigo County, the most consistently accurate "bellwether" in the nation. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 54%-45% - 2008: Obama 57%-41%. Obama won Monroe County 49.6-49.1 in 2012 and 52-47 in 2008. Published Nov. 8, 2016 at 5:30 a.m. In an election that will be decided by a relatively small group of pivotal counties within a relatively small set of swing states, POLITICO has selected 25 critical battleground counties that are poised to be difference makers, places that could have a material impact on the presidential election. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 105,724Republicans: 70,060Unaffiliated: 15,141Other: 6,079. Latest voter registration totals: 216,082No party registration. The storied home of Reagan Democrats and the third most-populous county in the state, southeastern Michigans Macomb last went Republican at the presidential level in 2004. "These counties, they're not real representations of America," says Mr Kreisberg of BlueLabs Analytics. Latest voter registration totals: 937,155 No party registration. Ryan Matsumoto is a contributing analyst for Inside Elections. 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. 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. Bellwether counties are already extremely rare, but some bellwether counties are better than others at highlighting a change in sentiment. 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. That is 19 counties still standing after 10 elections! Racine County, which features a significant Hispanic and African American population, is the only competitive county bordering Milwaukee Ozaukee, Waukesha and Washington counties are reliably Republican. 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? Other counties to watch: Clark County (Las Vegas, Henderson), Democrats have to drive up big margins in Las Vegas, something they have lots of experience doing. Read about our approach to external linking. Republicans also have to do drive up their own turnout in big population areas like Charlotte, but also have to drive up margins in lots of medium-size population counties like Union (Charlotte suburb). In other words, only 54 percent of bellwether counties from 1980 to 2012 kept their status in 2016. For Trump to win, he has to carry this populous Detroit suburb. So the question is, how many of them switched back to the Democrat party in 2020? Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 316,586Republicans: 258,725No Party Affiliation: 206,457Others: 22,695. Really stop reading. Or even better, if you have children, get them to do it for you. Where Did All The Bellwether Counties Go? University of Denver, 2. That might mean needing to factor that in by a couple points. While local Republican Party candidates enjoyed a bump in local media coverage for opening a new headquarters last summer, Democrats were facing vastly different circumstances. (i.e. There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States, but in presidential elections they are not all created equal. Co., as its sometimes referred to, has gone more closely for the statewide winner than any other big county. But there was only one county Clallam, Washington which voted Democrat. Side note Could the Florida Keys tell us who wins? If it's close here, Georgia could be in play. In economics, a 'bellwether' is a leading indicator of an economic trend. "End of day, the solution is complicated but the problem is very simple," wrote a user who shared the meme on Instagram. 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 . Other counties to watch: Wake, in the heart of the Research Triangle, used to be considered a swing county. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 52%-46% - 2008: Obama 55%-43%. But that changed in 2016 when Trump made huge gains with white voters without a college degree. With demographic change in the Research Triangle area, though, it's possible for Clinton to win without this smaller county. Help raise awareness within your community about the lingering, unresolved issues with election integrity. North Carolina (15 electoral votes) - Toss-up. ", "Bellwether Counties Nearly Wiped Out by 2020 Election", "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_election_bellwether_counties_in_the_United_States&oldid=1125445752, This page was last edited on 4 December 2022, at 01:36. If bellwethers were just a statistical curiosity and purely random, we could expect half of these counties to pick the winning party at the 2020 election. This one of 99 counties made up 16 percent of Obama's total vote in 2012. In the end, only Clallam County retained its streak this year. But theres a blue collar contingent too who feel like theyre being ignored, according to county Democratic Chairman Marty Martinez. These counties were geographically clustered in the Midwest and in the Northeast. The county narrowly voted for Bush in 2000 but has gone Democratic in the three presidential elections since then, though never by more than 52 percent. But it's also not unprecedented. Go on, look them up! 2016 winners: Bernie Sanders (Democratic caucus); Ted Cruz (GOP state convention), Latest voter registration totals:Unaffiliated: 112,113Democrats: 109,965Republicans: 100,540Libertarian: 3,009. Trump, however, needs to drive up the score in Collin (Plano). For a county to be considered a bellwether it would have to vote for the winning party at each of the following elections: That is 4 switches in 8 election cycles! GOP Chairman Dale Fellows noted that the population has been steadily aging in recent years. If Clinton can carry Henrico, it will help offset nearby Chesterfield County, the slightly larger and more Republican-oriented Richmond suburb. That's 14 in a row. Once-reliably Republican -- and essential to Republicans to help overcome the deficit they face in Las Vegas Clark County -- Washoe voted twice for Bush and then twice for Obama. Now imagine getting 21 out of 22! How many of these 150 switch counties voted Democrat in 2020? Republicans have paid some attention. 3. There are 391 such counties. The question is just how big of a margin she can run up here -- where roughly two-thirds of the states presidential votes were cast in 2012 -- to offset Trumps victories across much of the rest of the state. It is important to realise these counties have no allegiances whatsoever and will happily vote for whichever party makes the most sense to them based on merit. Obeng (2016) was similarly skeptical, noting that bellwethers run the risk of producing models that explain what has happened but cannot predict the future. Pittsburghs Allegheny County, the second-most populous county in the state after Philadelphia, is heavily Democratic. Well, lets consider the percentage gap between the winning and losing party in these counties. 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. Has No Presidential Candidate Won Iowa, Florida and Ohio and Still Lost? (Independent parties will reduce the winning margin between the two major parties.) Watauga has gone for. 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. This was George W. Bush territory in 2000 and 2004, but Obama brought it back into the Democratic fold in his two elections. John King has identified as key in the 2016 election. 10. More than half of all Americans livein just 143 counties, per the U.S. Census Bureau. We already claimed that bellwether counties are a lot more than statistical curiosities, but lets assume for the time being that normal rules of probability apply. Also key is Larimer (Fort Collins). Home to Tipton (population 3,199), Cedar has gone with the winner of every presidential and Senate race since 1992. The divisions were everywhere. That'sanother reason results of the contests might not have lined up. Share your comments below or join the related discussion on Gitlab. If they are tipping to Clinton, it's over. His win in 2012 was by a smaller margin in Forsyth County than in 2008, as the state flipped back to Mitt Romney. If youve done your research and found the 2020 results for each of these counties, you should find the results extremely puzzling. Copyright 2023 HotAir.com/Salem Media. It voted twice for Bush and twice for Obama. "Mathematically impossible," wrote a user who shared it on Facebook. For a minute in this campaign, it looked like it could be a fairly close race in Texas, even within 5 points. 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. Watch this populous county, home to Manchester. ), voted Democrat again in 2020? "That didn't happen after 2016," she adds. 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 . 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. Hillsborough made up more than half that margin Obama won the county by 36,000 votes. The strongest bellwether counties are those that back the winning candidate in all elections. Outstanding. It went for Romney 54 to 44 percent, nearly reflecting the overall margin. This populous, longtime Republican county has shifted in the last two presidential elections, as demograpic change has swept the metro Atlanta area. Demographically, the bellwether counties tended to be whiter, older, less . It went with the exact margin for Romney in 2012 statewide and McCain statewide in 2008. Traditional Republican eastern counties of Carroll, Belknap and Rockingham, home to Portsmouth, fell back to the GOP in 2012, but not by enough for Romney, who had a home in the state, to win. In politics, the term often applies in a metaphorical sense to characterize a geographic region where political tendencies match in microcosm those of a wider area, such that the result of an election in the former region might predict the eventual result in the latter. Colorado (9 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. 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. Just one Clallam County, Washington voted for President Joe Biden. Other counties to watch: Remarkably, Obama won every county in this state in 2008. But its not just demographic trends driving the loss of bellwether status. We sorted the counties from highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (in the 2008 election). And like so many electoral trends, demographics play a major role in explaining why these once-bellwether counties finally missed the mark in 2020. Will That Last?]. Trump also needs to overperform in Macomb, another Detroit suburb, which narrowly went for Obama in 2012.