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.
However, 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)
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.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
However, 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.
