growing political separation between urban and rural America—cities becoming ever more Democratic while rural areas have become increasingly Republican—has tilted Illinois strongly to the Democrats thanks to the increasingly Democratic lean of Cook County, home of Chicago, the Midwest’s biggest city.
Illinois gave up its bellwether status by voting comfortably for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and no one expected it to go Republican in 2016 unless the GOP ran up a national margin of Ronald Reaganesque proportions. It just isn’t really winnable for Republicans anymore in a close national election.
In the midst of the 2004 presidential campaign, the Economist declared, not inaccurately at the time, that “Missouri has an almost mythical reputation in American presidential politics.”10 The state had voted for the presidential victor in every election but one since 1904, and it was poised once again to play an outsized role in another close race. Indeed, Missouri ended up voting with the winner—Republican George W. Bush—but Bush did about two and a half points better in the Show-Me State than he did nationally, while Democrat John Kerry did about two points worse. It was the third election in a row that Missouri had voted slightly more Republican than the nation, a tiny lean that would become more pronounced.
Missouri has of late tilted away from the Midwest and toward the South, and there are not enough Democratic votes in the state’s two major cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, to make up for the rest of the state becoming reliably Republican.11 After fulfilling its bellwether role for the 25th time in 26 elections in 2004, Missouri resisted the country’s clear Democratic swing to Obama in 2008, voting narrowly for John McCain. By 2012, Missouri voted seven points more Republican than the nation as a whole—the GOP’s best performance in the state relative to the national results since the Civil War. Missouri often leaned toward its southern neighbors throughout its history, including in 1956, when it was the only non-Confederate state to back Democrat Adlai Stevenson against Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.
Only 10 states voted for both parties at least once in the four elections from 2000 to 2012. Illinois and Missouri were not among them; one uniformly backed the Democrats (the Land of Lincoln), the other, Republicans (the Show-Me State). Ohio, meanwhile, voted with the winner in all four elections and mirrored the national vote in each election.
THE WESTERN BELLWETHERS
Out west, California, Nevada, and New Mexico have strong histories of voting for presidential winners, although there is increasing evidence that two of the three—the Golden State and the Land of Enchantment—are, like Illinois, moving more reliably into the Democratic column.
Shocking as it may seem to those familiar with only 21st-century results, California went Republican in all but one election—the Lyndon Johnson 1964 landslide—from 1952 through 1988. However, a Californian was on the Republican ticket in all but three of those 10 elections: Richard Nixon was Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate in 1952 and 1956, and the GOP nominee in his own right in 1960, 1968, and 1972, while former California Governor Ronald Reagan was the Republican nominee in 1980 and 1984. Throughout this period, California was not noticeably more Republican than the nation as a whole, and its failure to vote for Carter in the very close 1976 election was part of a broader problem for the Democrat that year: he proved to have very little appeal west of the Mississippi River (the farthest west state he carried was Texas, which has voted more often with the South than the West throughout its history). No one would have called California a bellwether in the 2010s, given how reliably Democratic it became, thanks to the dominance of its big, urban centers along the coast and growing population of Democratic-leaning nonwhite voters.
If one just went back over the last hundred years of elections (it didn’t become a state until 1912), New Mexico would match Ohio as having the best record in voting with the winning presidential candidate. But the Land of Enchantment—where about two in five voters were Hispanic in 201212—might also be shifting more reliably into the Democratic column. It was more Democratic in 2008 and 2012 than it had been since Harry Truman’s victory in 1948. Both presidential campaigns largely ignored the state in 2012, and Obama won it by 10 points.
With its historically large Hispanic population, New Mexico doesn’t look much like the nation. John Petrocik commenting in 1996 on New Mexico’s history of backing winners in presidential elections, noted, “The problem is that New Mexico doesn’t look like anyplace else. It’s too atypical and out of the way for people to take its bellwether status as anything but luck or accident, even though that might not be the case.”13 If Hispanics continue to vote for Democrats at a rate of two-thirds or better—a big if, because such voting patterns are not necessarily set in stone—New Mexico may move to the Democrats as Missouri has shifted toward the Republicans.
Nevada is a different story. From 1912 to 2012, Nevada voted against the winner just once, when it narrowly supported unelected incumbent Ford over Carter in 1976. Its modern bellwether role can be attributed to being “representative of America,” according to Nevada political reporter and analyst Jon Ralston.
Urban and rural, growing Hispanic population, a fast-growing melting pot until the recession slowed us down. Nevada really is three states, which put together form a whole that would reflect the nation’s sentiments. Super-urban Clark County, with the biggest city and all the concomitant problems, issues of a big city, and heavily Democratic; urban Reno, a small-town feel, the swing county that has liberals more liberal than Clark and conservatives more conservative; the other 15 counties, all rural, very conservative, a picture of red America. . . . Why wouldn’t we be representative?14
Demographically, Nevada provides what could be a vision of the nation’s future. According to the 2012 general election exit poll (a survey taken of voters at polling places after they voted), Nevada’s voters were eight points more diverse than the nation’s: 64 percent White (compared to 72 percent nationally), 19 percent Hispanic/Latino, 9 percent Black, 5 percent Asian American, 4 percent Other.15
All in all, there’s a good argument for Nevada as a premier bellwether going forward. But there’s more to determining a bellwether than just whether a state votes with the winners.
OHIO: ALWAYS IN THE MIDDLE
Another way to measure how much a state’s results reflect the national average is looking at how far the state deviates from the national results. For this, let’s return to the presidential deviations explained in the first chapter. As a refresher, the presidential deviation shows how far away from the national vote a state’s results were in a given year, using just the two-party vote. In a 50–50 national election, a state that voted 55 percent to 45 percent for the Democrat would be D +5, and a state that voted 55 percent to 45 percent for the Republican would be R +5. The bigger the deviation, the further a state’s results are from the national popular vote.
Table 2.2 shows how many times from 1896 through 2012 each state had a presidential deviation that was less than five. States that are generally close to the national voting can be considered bellwethers; states that are not are outliers.
Table 2.2. States with presidential deviations less than five in presidential elections, 1896–2012
Amazingly, Ohio’s presidential deviation has been five points or more only three times in the last 30 elections, by far the lowest of any states. New Mexico comes in second, at six of the last 26 (it first voted for president in 1912). Other than those two states, no other has been near the national average in more than 75 percent of the presidential elections over this 116-year time period. In fact, 29 of the 51 states (including the District of Columbia) have more often than not had presidential
