Thursday, February 22, 2007
 

Bellwether states

[updated below]

I remembering hearing quite a bit in the last couple of Presidential elections about Missouri being a bellwether state, because beginning with the Presidential election of 1904, it has only gone for a candidate who was not elected President one time -- in 1956 when they gave their electoral votes to Adlai Stevenson instead of supporting Eisenhower. That's 26 Presidential elections with only one miss, a remarkable roll giving Missouri a 96% winning percentage during that period.

Tennessee 2004 Presidential popular vote by countyHowever, I don't recall hearing much about the bellwether status of Tennessee. It's true that if you look at the same 26 elections, Tennessee has missed supporting the victor 4 times, instead of Missouri's one time, but if you look instead at the past 20 elections (beginning in 1928), Tennessee has picked the winner all but once, in 1960 when they supported Nixon over Kennedy.

So over the past 76 years, in 20 Presidential elections from 1928 to 2004, both Tennesee and Missouri have the same winning percentage, 95%.

(Tennessee also picked the winner in 1912, 1916 and 1920, but missed in 1924.)

Update: It's not entirely clear to me that either of these are anything more than statistical flukes, given the drastic political re-alignments that have come about in this century, particularly the FDR/New Deal coalition and the Republican capture of the South via Nixon's "Southern Strategy." However, since both of those blocs had at their core the Southern states, and given that Missouri and Tennessee are both "border states" (in relation to the Confederacy which forms the core of the South), there may be some validity to them. It's possible, I suppose, that Missouri and Tennessee may act much like the bulk of the South unless popular currents are strong enough to move them away, and in this way they might reflect national trends.

Update: One state that has done better as a bellwether than Tennessee, but still not quite as good as Missouri, is Nevada, which in 24 elections from 1912 to 2004 only picked a loser once, in 1976 when it voted for Ford. This is a "bellwether percentage" of 95.8%. In the "Missouri period" of 1904-2004 it had one other loser, in 1908 when it went for William Jennings Bryan over Taft. In the "Tennessee period" of 1928-2004, it has the same percentage as Tennessee and Missouri -- 95%. (I have no particular explanation for why Nevada would be a bellwether.)

Another state that has laid claim to being a bellwether is Delaware, which voted for the winner from 1952 to 1996, spoiling this run by going for Gore* and Kerry in the last two elections. More than this, Delaware also did well from 1920 to 1944 (going for Dewey in 1948 over Truman) and also from 1892 to 1912 (supporting Charles Hughes over Wilson in 1916). Over the course of 29 elections, Delaware got 25 of them, right, for a 86% bellwether rating (85.7% over the last 14 elections). Delaware is also sometimes considered a border state.

Here's a handy little chart that shows the bellwether percentages of these four five states: (see note below re: Ohio)

STATE ELECTIONS WINS MISSES PERCENTAGE
MISSOURI  26 (1904-2004)  25  1956                          96.2
24 (1912-2004) 23 1956 95.8 cf. NV
20 (1928-2004) 19 1956 95.0 cf. TN
29 (1892-2004) 26 1896,1900,1956 89.7 cf. OH
NEVADA    24 (1912-2004)  23  1976                          95.8
20 (1928-2004) 19 1976 95.0 cf. TN
26 (1904-2004) 24 1908,1976 92.3 cf. MO
29 (1892-2004) 24 1892,1896,1900,1908,1976 82.8 cf. OH
TENNESSEE 20 (1928-2004)  19  1960                          95.0  
24 (1912-2004) 22 1924,1960 91.6 cf. NV
26 (1904-2004) 22 1904,1908,1924,1960 84.6 cf. MO
29 (1892-2004) 24 1896,1900,1904,1908,1924,1960 82.8 cf. OH
OHIO      14 (1952-2004)  13  1960                          92.9 
26 (1904-2004) 24 1944,1960 92.3 cf. MO
24 (1912-2004) 22 1944,1960 91.7 cf. NV
20 (1928-2004) 18 1944,1960 90.0 cf. TN
29 (1892-2004) 26 1892,1944,1960 89.7
DELAWARE  29 (1892-2004)  25  1916,1948,2000,2004           86.2   cf. OH
14 (1952-2004) 12 2000,2004 85.7 cf. OH
20 (1928-2004) 17 1948,2000,2004 85.0 cf. TN
26 (1904-2004) 22 1916,1948,2000,2004 84.6 cf. MO
24 (1912-2004) 20 1916,1948,2000,2004 83.3 cf. NV
Another way of looking at this is that Missouri is batting one thousand since 1960, Ohio and Tennessee since 1964 and Nevada since 1980.

[Note: Chart updated 9/28/07]


* I know, I know, Gore won the election in 2000, or would have if the Supreme Court had allowed the re-count to proceed. I'm going here by the only result that really counts: who took possession of the Oval Office. (Politics is not about theory, it's about practical results -- and did how that five vote majority get seated on the Court during a time when the Democrats controlled the Senate?) Anyone who wants to make the statistical adjustments can do so -- just credit Delaware with one more "win" and take away one from the other three states.

[Election results from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections] (link corrected 9/28/07)

Update (9/28): A Wikipedia editor correctly added Ohio to the list of bellwether states, for a total of five:
  1. Missouri - 1 miss (1956) from 1904 on, perfect since 1960

  2. Nevada - 1 miss (1976) from 1912 on, perfect since 1980

  3. Tennessee - 1 miss (1960) from 1928 on, perfect since 1964

  4. Ohio - 2 misses (1944, 1960) from 1896 on, perfect since 1964

  5. Delaware - 2 misses (2000, 2004) from 1952 on, perfect from 1952 to 1996
I've updated the chart above to reflect this change.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/22/2007 02:45:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







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