Free Republic

The state at the center of Democrats’ uphill drive to keep the House just gave the party the strongest signal yet that their fortunes might be reversing. After a special election campaign centered on abortion rights, turnout surged Tuesday in Democratic Rep.-elect Pat Ryan’s home turf of Ulster County — the most heavily populated section of New York’s battleground 19th District. Ryan’s margins even narrowly exceeded President Joe Biden’s performance over Donald Trump’s in the county in 2020, giving him the cushion to withstand drop-off elsewhere in the district and win a bellwether race just months before the general election.

Fewer than 4 in 10 California voters support removing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) from office in this month’s recall election, according to a new poll of likely voters released just over a week before ballots are due to be returned. Just 39 percent of likely voters told pollsters at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) they would vote to recall Newsom, while 58 percent said they would vote against the recall. Those figures are in line with earlier PPIC polls in March and May, which showed Newsom surviving by roughly the same margin. About 4 in 5 Republicans will...

On May 8th, 2021, over 30,000 Virginia Republican voters participated in an “unassembled convention” at various statewide locations to elect the 2021 Republican ticket. Using weighted, ranked choice voting (RCV)—where the lowest vote getter is eliminated each round until a winner clinches over 50 percent—voters selected nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General: Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares, respectively. Although Virginia trends blue nationally, could this year’s statewide election be a bellwether going into 2022? It’s possible—given historical precedent. A Repeat of 2009 Red Wave in 2021?As the Virginian Pilot recently noted, “While Republicans have not won...

Several counties in America are considered the “bellwethers,” the ones that nearly always vote for the eventual winner of the presidential race. And by “nearly always,” we mean it’s remarkable how accurate they are throughout history. This year, the bellwether counties voted heavily for Donald Trump, and for many of them, it appears they have broken their near-perfect records of predicting the winner, if the current trends hold and Biden is elected president. Valencia County, New Mexico – perfect record with the electoral college winner since 1952 (longest current perfect streak). 2020: Trump 54%, Biden 44.% Vigo County, Indiana (county...

A post-election analysis of bellwether counties – that is, the 19 counties around the country that have consistently picked the winner of presidential races with extremely rare exceptions over the past century – once again clearly picked one candidate over another this year. And it wasn’t Joe Biden. America has become so polarized that presidential bellwether counties - those that consistently back the national winner, switching between parties in the process - are nearing extinction. From 1980 through 2016, 19 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties voted for the eventual president in every election. Only one of them, Washington...

America has become so polarized that presidential bellwether counties—those that consistently back the national winner, switching between parties in the process—are nearing extinction. From 1980 through 2016, 19 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties voted for the eventual president in every election. Only one of them, Washington state’s Clallam County, backed President-elect Joe Biden last week. Other counties that had been bellwethers all the way back to the 1950s ended their runs by backing President Trump instead of the Democrat.

Of the top ten most historically accurate bellwether counties this election......Trump won 9 of them (including the top 5) by an average of 55-43. He lost the DE bellwether county by 47-51. 99% of all votes are in, there will be no flips. I verified vote percentage totals on the DecisionDesk website with some minor rounding up or down to whole numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_election_bellwether_counties_in_the_United_States Valencia County, New Mexico – perfect with the EC winner since 1952. Trump won it 54-44 Vigo County, Indiana - 2 misses (1908, 1952) Trump 56-41 Westmoreland County, Virginia – two misses since 1928 (1948 & 1960)...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - snip As of 6:00 PM EST on Wednesday, Vigo County has counted 54% of the ballots. President Donald Trump is leading the way with 56% of the vote compared to Joe Biden’s 41% snip

@realDonaldTrump When I decided to go to Ohio for Troy Balderson, he was down in early voting 64 to 36. That was not good. After my speech on Saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. Now Troy wins a great victory during a very tough time of the year for voting. He will win BIG in Nov. 10:59 PM · Aug 7, 2018

TERRE HAUTE, Indiana—On the first Saturday of Donald Trump’s presidency, as protesters and marchers stormed the nation’s capital and cities around the country, Dick and Jane Ames threw a party. Four days earlier, they visited a Party Mania store and purchased two big red balloons, $11 apiece, one in the shape of the number 4 and the other in the shape of a 5. For $50, they purchased a cardboard cutout of the guest of honor. Jane, 74, prepared a tantalizing, if at first blush random, spread of food. She whipped up a tamale casserole, a tossed salad with tomatoes,...

"Talk about bellwethers: Ohio’s vote for the winning presidential candidate has deviated from the national vote an average of just 2.2 points since 1900 and only 1.3 points since 1964" The Traitor-In-Chief Obama won OH by 2.9% in 2012 and nationally by 3.85%. If Trump is up or tied in OH then that is just about where the race is nationally right now.

Some political “experts” insist “Bellwether” counties like Vigo, Indiana aren’t “bellwether” counties but just statistical coincidences. “After all, what can an unsophisticated bunch of Midwestern hay seeds know about politics that we don’t know?” they might smugly suggest. The ironic answer to that question is: Not much, except who will win the presidency every four years. What makes Vigo County so unique is that since 1888 the voters there have voted for the winner of each presidential election, except in 1908 and 1952. That means they have been right 14 elections in a row and 29 of the past 31...

On paper, Republicans Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Rob Portman of Ohio should be losing in the polls in their U.S. Senate re-election races. Both men have been hammered for a month over whether they will support their party's presumptive nominee, their opposition to voting on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee and their refusal to enact new gun legislation after the massacre in Orlando. Yet both are defying conventional political wisdom. Toomey increased his lead over Democrat Katie McGinty by 8 percentage points in the latest Quinnipiac survey. Portman's numbers improved by 9 points, placing him in a tie with...

This county is a national bellwether. Its sided with the winner in all but two presidential elections since 1892. We'll see tonight who wins this pivotal county. It should tell us who'll win the White House. From Wikipedia: "The county is one of the best bellwether regions for voting U.S. presidential elections; it has voted for the winning candidate in every election since 1956 and in all but two elections since 1892. It continued the trend in 2008, voting for Illinois Senator Barack Obama by a 16-point margin. Holmes is part of Indiana's 8th congressional district, which is held by...

This fall, Republicans in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District have the chance to retire Leonard Boswell and take back a seat in the House.  Once believed to be a so-called “conservative Democrat,” Boswell’s liberal voting record demonstrates that his loyalties lie not with the good people of the Hawkeye State, but rather with Nancy Pelosi. Voting with his misguided party for Speaker Pelosi’s disastrous liberal agenda 98% of the time, Boswell’s record is unacceptable to his moderate constituents. Located in central-southeast Iowa, Iowa’s 3rd District covers all or part of twelve counties. This includes the Des Moines/Polk County area, where 60% of...

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s unemployment rate jumped to 11.1 percent in June, up from 10.8 percent in May and the first time in nearly 26 years that the rate has topped 11 percent. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services released the rate on Friday, July 17. “Ohio’s labor market continued to weaken in June,” Douglas Lumpkin, ODJFS director, said in a press release. “Significant job losses in both the goods-producing and service-providing industries led to an increase in the unemployment rate to 11 .1 percent. The state’s nonfarm wage and salary employment decreased 33,000 over the month, from 5,133,200...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the best way to judge his economic stimulus plan in the next two years will be whether it creates or saves 3 million to 4 million jobs. And if the White House predictions are correct, no state will produce more jobs than California, which has been losing jobs faster than any other state. More than 10 percent of the jobs – 421,000 – are forecast to come from the Golden State, which has a 9.3 percent unemployment rate, the fourth-highest in the nation and California's highest in 15 years. The state's loss of 78,200...

What will be your first tipoff as to the final outcome of the election? Will it be the weather forcast a few days before the election? Will it be the reports of where voter turnout is the heaviest? How about the speed with which some of the first states will be called? What's your tell?

McCain Outperforming Bush in Ohio Bellwethers? I continue to hear from my source on the ground in Ohio, who is seeing results for McCain that are surprisingly good. He puts it, "in a key bellweather section of Ohio, McCain continues to show internals that are exceeding the national pollsters’ results. This portends a potentially larger McCain victory in Ohio than Bush had in 2004.” As for those national pollsters, note that Fox News/Rasmussen puts McCain up 2, NBC/Mason-Dixon puts McCain up 1 and Rasmussen had it a tie last week. My guy on the ground thinks this might mean that...

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley easily won the Republican primary contest last night against former state Supreme Court chief justice Roy S. Moore, once regarded as a formidable challenger because of his support from social conservatives who cheered his refusal to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. Riley probably will face Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, who in early returns in the Democratic primary was burying the comeback attempt of former governor Don Siegelman, who hoped to use a November contest against Riley to showcase his contention that his ongoing corruption trial is a political vendetta...