The divisions were everywhere. 11. From 1980 to 2016, 19 counties voted for the winner of the presidential election every single time. Georgia (16 electoral votes) - Lean Republican. To flip Pennsylvania, Trump has to start in Bucks and expand in places like Northampton. That Trump did so well in the remaining 19 bellwether counties in 2020 should come as no surprise, then. These counties turned out to vote strongly for the Democrat party in 2008, so they are the most likely to swing back to the Democrat party in 2020. Michigan (16 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. So, where are the bellwether counties? A caveat: because its black population is higher than the state average (21 percent versus 13 percent), the county has gone narrowly for Democrats even in 2004 and 2000 when George W. Bush won the state. Much of the rest of the state is rural and ruby red Republican. Ron Elving . 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. Especially since Biden received million more votes than Obama did in 2008. 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. More Than Half of U.S. Population in 4.6 Percent of Counties, Fact check: Clarifying the comparison between popular vote and counties won in the 2020 election, Bellwether Counties Nearly Wiped Out by 2020 Election, Americas bellwethers crumbled in aligning with Trump in 20. It all starts in Salt Lake, a place more liberal than you might think. Somehow we jumped from 22 to 1 county in one election cycle and we are supposed to believe that is normal? For a minute in this campaign, it looked like it could be a fairly close race in Texas, even within 5 points. None of them impacts the legitimacy of the presidential election. Still, the state's worth watching. We sorted the counties from highest to lowest Democrat percentage vote (in the 2008 election). Bellwether counties are important, and their significance should not be downplayed. Its also loaded with government contractors and defense companies hit hard by the sequester. Bucks has three times the voters than its neighboring county to the north. Also key is Larimer (Fort Collins). Compiled by Si Williams, non-US resident, and other contributors. 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. Seven counties, including Vigo, have got it right in the past dozen elections. Trump also needs to drive up margins in Republican-leaning Western counties like Kent (Grand Rapids) and Ottawa (on the shores of Lake Michigan). Furthermore, consider the fact that bellwethers dont just have a random 50% chance at winning we should expect them to have a better than 50% chance of getting it right. If Clinton's winning there, it means she's hitting marks with young voters. Telegram Telegram Only one of them, Washington state's Clallam County, backed. Find the answer by searching politico.com/2020-election/results. We believe this was a mistake. 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. 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? How could 16 out of 17 bellwether counties predict a Trump win - Quora List of election bellwether counties in the United States 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. Based on our research, the claim that these five statistics about Obama, Trump and Biden appear to discredit election results is MISSING CONTEXT. After you have spent an hour trying, record the maximum streak length you achieved. (Independent parties will reduce the winning margin between the two major parties.) Even combined, they represent only53 votes a fraction of the 538 total electoral votesor the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House. 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. Florida (29 electoral votes) - Toss-up. More than one-in-four votes cast for Obama and Romney in 2012 came from Hillsborough. Answer (1 of 33): Because "bellwether counties" are a load of horse manure. (Think about what it takes, and what is required for a county to always get the election right. 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. 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.). It gets a lot more interesting. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 480,926Republicans, 323,870Unaffiliated: 229,298Others: 65,281. Colorado (9 electoral votes) - Lean Democratic. (You can make up your own mind on what the trends mean.). The state's demographics suggest it could go blue one day. Both Clinton and Trump need to turn out their bases in Fulton (Atlanta). It voted twice for Bush and twice for Obama. The Atlantic wonders why we're still arguing about masks. 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. As the country's demographics shift and the rural-urban divide becomes more pronounced, the chances appear slim. It's the wrong question. A total of 35 counties voted for the winner of each presidential election from 1980 through 2012. ET. Follow the Data Identify Electoral Fraud Using Trend Analysis . What science tells us about the afterlife. Statewide results: 2012: Obama 52%-46% - 2008: Obama 54%-44%. 8. 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. What, if anything, did we miss? Wilkes-Barres Luzerne County is traditionally Democratic territory in northeastern Pennsylvania but its also an aging, working-class county where Trumps message is resonating. For the first time "in years," says Mr Brikmanis, the Democratic National Party chose not to set up a local headquarters ahead of the November election. "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. So we took 15 of the states where this election has been hotly waged and identified one county in each that has gone with the winner or closely reflected the statewide margin in each. The matters that way on their minds are real. All rights reserved. Bonus points if you also keep track of the trends from 2016 to 2020. The best bellwether counties will consistently vote more than 50% for the winning party. To make things more interesting we will only look at swing counties since the 2004 election. Vigo County, Indiana, is a serious bellwether county. 2016 primary winners: Clinton, Cruz2012: Obama 53%, Romney 46%, Latestvoter registration totals:Democrats: 101,967Republicans: 75,145Unaffiliated:65,344Libertarian: 1,022. 10 bellwether counties that could signal where the election is headed 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. or even dive into the markdown files yourself to submit improvements. Fourth, it lists whether they won Florida, Ohio and Iowa Obama won them, Trump won them, Biden lost them. In fact, a national coalition of election security officials described the general election as "the most secure in American history," per USA TODAY. Fact check: Trump-backed Michigan congressional candidate John - CNN If Trump wants to win the state, he has to start with a win here and make up the rest of the margin elsewhere. Seriously. The odds of 21 counties out of 22 missing the mark is extremely remote! Ultimately, they are simply 19 counties and this time, 18 of them voted for the candidate who lost the election. You can find the answer by searching politico.com/2020-election/results. In total, Trump won 18 of the 19 former bellwether counties, winning the average such county by 13.7 points in 2020. In 2018, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, carried it by 11 points . Democrats also have to win big in Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Guilford (Greensboro), Durham and Buncombe (Asheville). In other words, only 54 percent of bellwether counties from 1980 to 2012 kept their status in 2016. More than half of all Americans livein just 143 counties, per the U.S. Census Bureau. Clinton has to hit that margin in this county where more than half a million people voted. The question is, how much did they get it wrong by? 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. 9 Battleground State Counties That Trump and Biden Need to Win - The Some of the same messages that are going to work in Northeastern Ohio are maybe not going to work as well down here, said county GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou. Watch Hampton City. Re-doing the analysis we obtain 35 modern bellwether counties after the 2016 election. In other words, it's not whether Clinton wins Hillsborough that's important, but by how much. 1 County 61947 People 2012 Predicting since One county. "These counties, they're not real representations of America," says Mr Kreisberg of BlueLabs Analytics. 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. With each new section we relaxed the constraint, to include the most friendly Democrat voting counties in the country (based on the 2008 election). Here are the concepts we have established so far: This is just the beginning. Now imagine getting 21 out of 22! These are the bellwether counties. Website Updates Paused 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. A total of 35 counties voted for the winner of each presidential election from 1980 through 2012. Latest voter registration totals:Democrats: 369,734Republicans: 247,029No Party Affiliation: 218,642Others: 30,414. But that's no longer the case. Lake County is a perpetual nail-biter. Contributors wanted Asingle county could have as few as 88 residents,like Kalawao County, Hawaii. Take the time to ponder and realize that this is no mean feat! These bellwether counties mirror close NC race for president