Saturday, November 21, 2020

For "bellwether" counties that consistently voted for the winner the past 40 years -- 18 of 19 picked Trump in 2020

 Of the 19 "bellwether" counties that have consistently voted for the presidential winner since 1980, all but one chose Trump. ( source: Wall Street Journal )

Washington state's Clallam County was the only one of the 19 that favored Joe Biden. Biden won Washington state by over 19 percentage points, but carried the far northwest, rural county by only about 3 percentage points.

Vigo County in Indiana has chosen the winner correctly since 1956 -- they chose Trump in 2020 (wrong only in 1888, 1908 and 1952).

Just 2.5% of the nation's counties flipped from one party in 2016, to the other in 2020. Mostly by narrow margins.

State "bellwethers" Ohio and Florida both favored Trump. Ohio favored the losing candidate only twice since 1896 (Richard Nixon in his close loss to Kennedy in 1960 and Thomas Dewey in his famous 1944 upset loss to Harry Truman)