Okay, it’s past Labor Day and the election ramps up in earnest now. Get out the crystal ball and the tea leaves, because it’s time to participate in the dark arts of political prognostication. As you are painfully aware, the political equivalent of the ten biblical plagues, i.e., the Trump administration, came upon us as the result of 77,000 votes in three swing states. The 2020 battleground is predicted to be even larger, with up to a dozen states in play. However, political scientists and strategists have boiled down the fate of the election to ten key counties, believe it or not. Based on how these ten vote, it’s either more boils and locusts, or salvation, if we can believe the soothsayers. The Hill:
Erie County, Pa.
“What you have is a working-class county that’s socially conservative,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. “Many Democrats there believe that their party has deserted them and become the party of big cities.”
In 2016, Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton there by 1.6 percentage points — about twice the margin by which he won Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. In 2008 and 2012, Obama won Erie County by double-digit margins. Democratic success there will be a sign that the party has bridged the divide with its own voters who feel left behind.
Sauk County, Wis.
The historical home of the Ringling Brothers circus has become a political circus itself, as once-genteel Wisconsin politics has descended into acrimonious partisanship. […]
Sauk County has predicted the winner of Wisconsin’s electoral votes in nine of the past 10 presidential elections. Trump was the first Republican to carry the county in 28 years, when he won it by just 109 votes out of about 30,000 cast. He carried Wisconsin’s electoral votes by about eight-tenths of a percentage point.
Muskegon County, Mich.
Today, its economy is dominated by a struggling manufacturing industry and a growing health care sector. Though the county has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, Clinton won it by just 1,200 votes — the closest margin of any county in Michigan, which gave its electoral votes to Trump.
“Muskegon will be indicative of the statewide vote in the next election,” said Holly Hughes, who represented the area in the Michigan legislature and served on the Republican National Committee.
Maricopa County, Ariz.
In 2016, Trump beat Clinton in Maricopa County by just 3 percentage points, a slightly lower margin than his statewide edge. Only one Republican in recent history has won a statewide election without winning Maricopa County.
The areas most at risk for Republicans are middle-class precincts where college-educated residents tend to make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, said Mike Noble, a Republican pollster in Phoenix.
“It’s in these suburban areas where we are seeing the biggest shift in party voter preference,” Noble said. “Those [who] are college educated or above is where the GOP is currently hurting.”
Tarrant County, Texas
“In Tarrant, you still have some of those Country Club Republicans,” said Ed Espinoza, a Democratic strategist who runs the progressive group Progress Texas. “There is a greater discomfort among Republicans with the rhetoric coming from the president and the party in Texas than there might be in Dallas or other places.”
Tarrant County hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson won his home state in 1964. But its booming population may change that: Since Republicans began losing market share there, about 40 percent of the county’s residents are new.
New Hanover County, N.C.
But the GOP’s historic advantage there is shrinking. Obama came within 1,400 votes of winning New Hanover County in 2008, and Trump became the first Republican to win less than half the vote since George H.W. Bush split the conservative vote with Ross Perot in 1992.
“Like most of the state’s larger cities, Wilmington has seen an influx of urban white liberals, making the city more Democratic,” wrote John Wynne, a North Carolina elections analyst. “At the same time, affluent retirees, who tend to vote Republican, are settling along the beaches.”
Peach County, Ga.
About a hundred miles south of Atlanta lies one of the country’s clearest examples of a combined racial and geographic divide. In the middle of rural Georgia, Peach County’s residents are about half white and 45 percent African American. About half live in its cities, and half live in rural areas.
In a county of just 27,000 people, every vote counts. Last time around, Peach County stood as a bellwether for the entire state. Trump took 50.3 percent of the vote, almost perfectly matched his performance statewide, 50.4 percent. In 2018, Republican Brian Kemp scored 52 percent of the vote in his bid for governor, beating out Democrat Stacey Abrams by just under 500 votes.
Washington County, Minn.
Washington County voted twice for George W. Bush, then twice for Obama. Clinton carried Washington County by just 1.8 percentage points, almost exactly the margin by which she carried Minnesota as a whole.
“President Trump has already transformed rural politics in his favor, so increasing support from suburban voters will be key to the outcome of the election,” said former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), who carried Washington County in both his runs for governor.
Hillsborough County, N.H.
And while Trump won narrowly in 2016, there are signs of serious discontent. The 2018 midterm elections wiped out many Hillsborough members of the state legislature; today, Democrats hold two-thirds of the state House districts in the county.
“Hillsborough tends to represent the state in terms of electoral outcomes,” said Mike Dennehy, a GOP strategist who ran the New Hampshire operations for former Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) two presidential campaigns. It represents about a quarter of the state’s registered voters, a pivotal slice that makes a difference in such an evenly divided state.
Lincoln County, Maine
At the same time, its picturesque islands and landscapes have made it a longtime tourism destination, from the Gilded Age to today, said Colin Woodard, a Maine-based journalist and author of “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.”
“A mix of working class fishermen, deep-pocketed retirees (both liberal and conservative) and tourism-dependent workers and business owners…”
Those rival factions fought to a near draw in 2016. Clinton won Lincoln County, 47.6 percent to 45.2 percent — nearly identical to her 2-point win in the popular vote. If Trump keeps his blue-collar base, or if ancestral Republicans break against him and cost him the White House, Lincoln County will be the microcosm through which to view the 2020 outcome.
These indicators are good, but the truly fascinating bellwether of the 2020 election, and of all presidential elections since the 1890’s, is Vigo County, Indiana. As Vigo votes, so votes the nation, for some reason, and it has flipped back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, being wrong only twice, in the past 125 years. NPR:
There are many hypotheses, none of which fully explain this quirky mystery of why a small region in southwest Indiana (a reliably Republican state) routinely jumps from Democrat to Republican in presidential years.
For starters, the county’s demographics don’t provide any particularly helpful clues.
“Vigo County is more white than the nation,” explained Matthew Bergbower, a political science professor at Indiana State University. “The nation overall is far more diverse on Hispanics than Vigo County. On education levels, Vigo County is less educated. And, then…if you’re gonna look at income, Vigo County is poorer.” […]
But there’s another major factor that might explain the county’s predictive power – it’s a mix of rural and urban communities. The county is home to four colleges, and students tend to vote for Democrats. The county seat of Terre Haute is a small city and urban voters also tend to support Democrats.
“Then if you drive a couple miles away, you’re gonna see farms – you’re gonna see soybean, you’re gonna see corn, you’re gonna see hayfields and and we know how they lean in presidential elections,” said Bergbower, referring to research that shows rural voters lean Republican.
It’s an interesting and impressive track record to have, correctly predicting all these presidential elections. You want to watch the above ten counties, but Vigo is definitely the county that you want to keep your eye on. It seems to be the pulse of America, although nobody can say just why, especially the people who live there. Odd, and infinitely sad that they could vote for Obama twice and then switch to Trump. It will certainly be interesting to see what they do next.
