Washington county may be only one in US to pick winner in last 10 presidential races
One county in Washington may be the only one in the country that has picked the candidate who became the president for the last 10 straight elections, KING reported.
As the 2020 general election stands on Nov. 10, Clallam County appears to be the last to hold its winning streak that started in 1980, according to KING. The Wall Street Journal compiled a list of 19 counties in 2019 that had correctly voted for the president since Ronald Reagan’s win, one of which was Clallam.
But after this election, Clallam appears to be the last county to hold its record. As of Nov. 10, Democrat Joe Biden won 50.17% and President Donald Trump had 46.87% with only 300 ballots left to count, the county auditor’s website says.
In 2016, the county went for Trump, who won 47.63%, while Hillary Clinton received 44.8%, according to the auditor’s website. Barack Obama barely won the county in 2012 but won a larger amount of the vote against John McCain in 2008, voting records show.
Predating those results, the county voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Clinton in 1996 and ‘92, George H.W. Bush in ‘88 and Ronald Reagan in ‘84 and ‘80, according to KING.
The 19 counties listed by WSJ “largely have educational attainment levels below the national average, and they all saw slower-than-average population growth between 2010 and 2018,” according to the newspaper. The counties also “tend to be older and much less diverse than the nation as a whole,” the paper reported.
Clallam shares some of those traits, including a “higher-than-average unemployment rate, incomes below the median, with an older, less diverse population,” KING reported. Clallam County has a mix of industries in the northern portion of the Olympic Peninsula, including “timber, farm and maritime industrial jobs, with retirees especially in the eastern part of the county,” according to KING.
“We have a good mix,” Angela Poynter, a Clallam County resident who works at a local bakery in Sequim, told KING. “We’re just rural enough, but we’re city-taught enough to appeal to a broad range of people.”
A lot of its residents were unaware that the county had such a long winning-streak, KING reported.
“It’s amazing to me, but it’s understandable in a way because we have a few extremes here like everyone else, but people do think and talk and read and they stay involved with politics,” said Liz Bumgarner, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party, according to the news station. “They don’t just cut it out. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s a bellwether place.”
For those wondering which other counties were on the WSJ’s list, here are the other 18 counties:
- Warren County, Ill.
- Vigo County, Ind.
- Bremer County, Iowa
- Washington County, Maine
- Shiawassee County, Mich.
- Van Buren County, Mich.
- Hidalgo County, N.M.
- Valencia County, N.M.
- Cortland County, N.Y.
- Otsego County, N.Y.
- Ottawa County, Ohio
- Wood County, Ohio
- Essex County, Vt.
- Westmoreland County, Va.
- Juneau County, Wis.
- Marquette County, Wis.
- Richland County, Wis.
- Sawyer County, Wis.
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Washington county may be only one in US to pick winner in last 10 presidential races."