2016 bellwether counties

There are 25 counties with a Democrat percentage vote over 60%. Lets find a coin, and flip it. If Trump wants to win the state, he has to start with a win here and make up the rest of the margin elsewhere. The Most Important Counties to Watch on Election Night. 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 table shows the number of counties that voted for the winning candidate since the 1988 election. They're just facts about the vote. But there was only one county Clallam, Washington which voted Democrat. 2016 primary winners: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Latest voter registration totals: Democrats: 230,401Republicans: 211,817No Party Affiliation: 102,635Others: 16,526. Third, it lists the fractionof bellwether counties each candidate won Obama at 18 of 19, Trump at 18 of 19 and Biden at one of 19. . Florida (29 electoral votes) - Toss-up. Compiled by Si Williams, non-US resident, and other contributors. Latest voter registration totals: 937,155 No party registration. Ron Elving . ), voted Democrat again in 2020? With such overwhelming Democrat support in 2008, one can only surmise that ALL these 25 counties would have switched back to the Democrat party in 2020. Of these 35 counties, 10 of them consistently voted over 50% for the winning candidate since the year 2000. The fact that there are fewer swing counties means that there are fewer potential bellwether counties. It is the only county to go twice for Bush and twice for Obama. It's true that the report first showed Biden at 477 counties andTrump at 2,497 counties, though ithas since been updated to showBiden at 509 andTrump at 2,547. Ottawa County in Ohio has been on target every four years since 1964, and Bexar County in . Their concerns are real. Trump gave them hope. North Carolina (15 electoral votes) - Toss-up. If Clinton's winning there, it means she's hitting marks with young voters. 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. (subject to censorship). 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 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. In other words, it's not whether Clinton wins Hillsborough that's important, but by how much. Outstanding. On Dec. 14, President-elect Joe Biden secured his victory after he received306 votes from the Electoral College, per USA TODAY. 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. Winnebago County: A large bellwether county in east-central Wisconsin, Mr. Trump won it in 2016, but in 2018 Democrats running for governor and the Senate performed much better. i.e. Moving forward, it is entirely possible that there will be no single county that consistently indicates the results of a national election. 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. From 1980 through 2016, there were 19 counties that consistently voted for the eventual president. No county more closely reflected Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012 than Monroe, home to Key West and the rest of the Keys. 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. These counties' national bellwether status might not ring true in 2016, though, because Illinois is one of Obama's home states. 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. America's most accurate bellwether counties, regions that have a reputation for accurately picking the president, got the presidential election completely wrong. It almost became religious.". In communities . (You can make up your own mind on what the trends mean.). But it's still indicative of widespread support. The percentage of people with college degrees here is two-thirds higher than the rest of the state. A swing county is a county that voted correctly for the winning party at one election and then voted for the other winning party at the next election. Weve been losing a lot of younger people to other areas of the country. 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. Below are 10 bellwether counties that could give signs as to how the electorate feels this cycle and in future races. Other counties to watch: Watch Atlanta and the suburbs. Marcela Stewart speaks to a voter at an event to encourage minority voter turnout n Cutler Bay, Fla., on Sunday. If you'd like to assist or contribute in some way, learn how. We sorted the counties from highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (in the 2008 election). Vigo County, Indiana, is a serious bellwether county. And this is the state with the highest share of whites with college degrees in the country. Side note Could the Florida Keys tell us who wins? It clearly shows they hold no allegiances and will vote for whichever party makes the most sense to them at each election. a suburban Philadelphia county that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 with 52.6% of the vote, and that . Were doing a lot of adult retraining, he said. 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. 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. It's true that both Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2020 won in Florida, Ohio and Iowa. In fact, a national coalition of election security officials described the general election as "the most secure in American history," per USA TODAY. As with Valencia County, in the past bipartisanship wasn't unusual in Indiana's Vigo County. Ventura County, California - two misses since 1920 (in 1976 and 2016). 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. 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. Like Texas, Utah looks like it's receded from the battleground, so we don't include it in our 13 battlegrounds. Clinton has to hit that margin in this county where more than half a million people voted. Democrats also have to win big in Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Guilford (Greensboro), Durham and Buncombe (Asheville). So, where are the bellwether counties? "We had to quietly move our parade," she says. There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States, but in presidential elections they are not all created equal. 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? "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. On a cold, wind-swept November afternoon two weeks after election day, the crowds that thronged the beaches of Ottawa County all summer long are but a distant memory. She says that previously, "when there was a presidential election, people are watching, paying attention, and as soon as the president is elected, they forget [about politics] until it's election time again". Home to Tipton (population 3,199), Cedar has gone with the winner of every presidential and Senate race since 1992. We welcome any suggestions and content contibutions with credible references that help others understand the key election integrity issues. In the end, only Clallam County retained its streak this year. (Needless to say that if the tables were reversed, we would hear no end of the significance of bellwether counties in the media.). ", "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. How Does The Electoral College Work And Is It Fair? Do you know this baby? Utah (6 electoral votes) - Likely Republican. You have probably noticed by now that with each new section we write, we are relaxing the constraints to make it easier to build a case for the Democrats winning the 2020 election. The second-most populous county in the state, northern Nevadas Washoe County is home to Reno. 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. 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. Other counties to watch: Often early results in Michigan will show a close race or Republicans ahead, until the Detroit area votes come in. Even combined, they represent only53 votes a fraction of the 538 total electoral votesor the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House. 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. What science tells us about the afterlife. Kyrsten Sinema's Odds Of Reelection Don't Look Great. A bellwether county that includes Canton, its part of a heavily blue collar region where Trumps message could resonate. 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. It went in a big way for Trump in the primary, but Obama won it, and the margin was similar to his statewide spread.