The county is home to a huge diaspora of health care workers affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic, and other players in the areas huge medical cluster. "I asked if they were from the Republican Party, and they said they were," she says. 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. Re-doing the analysis we obtain 35 modern bellwether counties after the 2016 election. A total of 35 counties voted for the winner of each presidential election from 1980 through 2012. How many of these counties voted less for the Republican party in 2020? But after twice voting for George W. Bush, it has since moved well to the left. 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. What are the odds of getting 21 heads or 21 tails? The strongest bellwether counties are those that back the winning candidate in all elections. History suggests not: just two-thirds of historic bellwether counties. 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. Iowa (6 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. In the end, only Clallam County retained its streak this year. View our How You Can Help page, or contribute via Has No Presidential Candidate Won Iowa, Florida and Ohio and Still Lost? All Rights Reserved. The best bellwether counties will consistently vote more than 50% for the winning party. Their hopes are real. Help raise awareness within your community about the lingering, unresolved issues with election integrity. 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. Other counties to watch: Remarkably, Obama won every county in this state in 2008. All other 21 counties voted Republican. She blames much of that on the "Trump effect" - Mr Trump's ability to engage people in politics by appealing to their fears and discontents. 1 County 61947 People 2012 Predicting since One county. Election night is going to be information overload. Washoe County2016 caucus winners: Sanders, Trump2012: Obama 51%, Romney 47%, Latest voter registration totals:Republican: 105,410Democrats: 102,422Unaffiliated: 53,048Others: 19,815. That's 14 in a row. Clinton wouldn't mind having a win in Harris (Houston and its suburbs of over one million voters), Nueces (Corpus Christi) and Tarrant Ft. Worth/Arlington). Other swing counties to watch: Monroe and Calhoun. Other counties to watch: Also watch Luzerne (Wilkes-Barre). Other counties to watch: Often early results in Michigan will show a close race or Republicans ahead, until the Detroit area votes come in. George W. Bush twice won comfortably in Forsyth County, the home of Winston-Salem. So those suburban whites are key here and might tell a story not just about who wins the state, but who wins nationally. Wood County is a decent bellwether of the state: Mr. Trump carried it by eight points in 2016, matching his statewide margin. Once you have found all the results and looked at the trends, remember, these counties are the best counties at predicting an election outcome! 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. Joe Biden (631) 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. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Obama won comfortably here in 2008 but only squeaked to victory four years later. The probability is hard to comprehend, so lets figure it out for real. After 8 elections, the number of counties left standing defy the odds, and it is this fact that makes them bellwether counties. (Sorry, not sorry.) hide caption. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. If Clinton can carry Henrico, it will help offset nearby Chesterfield County, the slightly larger and more Republican-oriented Richmond suburb. Tampa's Hillsborough County is a top bellwether -- since 1960, no candidate has won Florida . Clinton will win Democratic Clark County, the states population hub and home to Las Vegas. The divisions were everywhere. A county that voted for the winning party in 1992 (Democrat), 2000 (Republican), 2008 (Democrat) and 2016 (Republican), irrespective of how they voted at the other elections. Lets rank these counties from highest to lowest Democrat voting percentages in the 2008 election. But county wins don't correlate with the popular vote, in part due to tremendousvariancein population size and density by county. Voter Demographics (9). If Clinton is getting in the mid-to-high 30s there, rather than the high 20s, she might have a shot at improving her statewide total enough to beat Trump and McMullin. Racine County2016 primary winners: Sanders, Cruz, Latest voter registration totals: 113,599No party registration. Out of 3,141 counties, there were 22 counties that had successfully voted for the winning candidate in each and every election between 1988 and 2016 (included). That'sanother reason results of the contests might not have lined up. 2016 Election (1135) "When I came here in 1989, you couldn't be elected dog catcher if you weren't a Democrat," he says. | AP Photo, By Darren Samuelsohn, Katie Glueck, Kyle Cheney and Daniel Strauss. "End of day, the solution is complicated but the problem is very simple," wrote a user who shared the meme on Instagram. Until this year. Key Counties: The race here is not binary, so watching the margins in the biggest counties will be important. The idea being these counties are good at sensing a change of sentiment and will happily vote for whichever party makes the most sense to them. Please keep this in mind as you continue to read through our bellwether analysis. A Changing America Faces A Stark Choice This Election. Statewide results: 2012: Romney 51%-49% - 2008: Obama 50%-49%. 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. Latestvoter registration totals:Democrats: 521,881Republicans: 248,934Unaffiliated: 66,775Other: 45,567. In total, Trump won 18 of the 19 former bellwether counties, winning the average such county by 13.7 points in 2020. Colorado (9 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. Increased political polarization is another reason why fewer counties are consistently indicative of presidential results in recent years. You should now have a real tangible sense of how difficult it is to get a streak of 10. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy lostall three states and won the White House, beating out future President Richard Nixon, according toSnopes. "This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors.". 2016 winners: Bernie Sanders (Democratic caucus); Ted Cruz (GOP state convention) . New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. Or want to contribute to our open-source collection of articles and statistics? 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. By Randy Yeip and Stuart A. Thompson. 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). 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 already extremely rare, but some bellwether counties are better than others at highlighting a change in sentiment. While Bill Clinton was in town recently to open up a Democratic campaign office, party leaders are skeptical they can win here with Hillary Clinton on the ticket. "We had to quietly move our parade," she says. But since it's gotten so much attention this cycle with the possibility that independent Evan McMullin siphons off votes from Trump, we kept it in here. 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. "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. 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. 7. As weve seen in the past two presidential elections, bellwether streaks can be suddenly ended thanks to Americas continually evolving political and demographic trends. 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. (The highest value being 60.6%), When sorted from the highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (at the 2008 election), we can see that there are 4 counties that have a percentage Democrat vote greater than 60% at the 2008 election. Some say it's not only the polarisation induced by the outgoing president that's to blame for traditional bellwether counties' failure to correctly predict the election. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 316,586Republicans: 258,725No Party Affiliation: 206,457Others: 22,695. Until this year. Statewide results: 2012: Romney 53%-46% - 2008: McCain 52%-47%. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 52%-46% - 2008: Obama 54%-45%. The fourth-largest county in the state, its home to the Green Bay Packers, which are a huge economic engine. There are a total of 3,142 counties or county equivalents in the United States.[1]. Lets introduce a new concept: the quality of prediction. 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. It all starts in Salt Lake, a place more liberal than you might think. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY SCHERER / GETTY IMAGES. President-elect Biden on Electoral College vote: Clear victory. HereIsTheEvidence.com and ElectionEvidence.com have compiled detailed databases of hundreds of items of election fraud evidence, by state. or even dive into the markdown files yourself to submit improvements. It went Republican in 2012; if Clinton is doing better or vice-versa there compared to Obama, it could be a sign of things to come. (Go to the bottom of the page. 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. Whether or not these less diverse, industry-dependent communities can regain their bellwether status in four years' time remains to be seen. 03:30. Wood County is a decent bellwether of the state: Mr. Trump carried it by eight points in 2016, matching his statewide margin. Four years later, Caswell is still looking for a second act for its . 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