In politics, the word “bellwether” refers to a political jurisdiction where residents’ political tendencies tend to match those of a larger population. In the world of presidential politics, there is no better bellwether than Clallam County, the only county in the United States of America whose voters have predicted every president elected after 1976.
Clallam County is batting 11-for-11 since then, having voted twice for Ronald Reagan; then for George H.W. Bush; twice for William J. Clinton; twice for George Bush; twice for Barak Obama; and once each for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Before the 2020 general election, 18 other counties had matched Clallam County’s record: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Vermont and Virginia each had one of these bellwether counties. Michigan, New Mexico, New York and Ohio each had two of these counties. Wisconsin had four.
With 17 of these 18 counties in the Midwest and the Northeast, it seems especially impressive for Clallam County, a small, rural county tucked away in the extreme northwest corner of the country, far removed from the concentration of the other bellwethers, to be so representative of the nation’s political consciousness,
Even more impressive is the accuracy with which the 2020 Clallam County vote matched the national vote compared to the 18 counties that lost their near-perfect status. Clallam County fell short of the national average when it came to Biden’s share of the combined Biden-Trump vote by just 0.53%, whereas the counties on the way to losing their bellwether status missed the national average by 9.65%.
What makes Clallam County capable of following the trend so often and with such a diversity of candidates? Clallam’s voting patterns have become a topic of great interest as we head into the upcoming presidential election Nationally, such publications as The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and local and regional newsrooms have attempted to discern the answer.
I decided to try, too. Thinking like the attorney and chemical engineer that I am, I expected the answer to be neatly explained by easily available statistics on such matters as age and sex, race, housing, education and income. To my
surprise, of the 39 demographic characteristics used by the Census Bureau (that can be expressed as percentages) to compare different jurisdictions, Clallam County is within 5% of the nation’s average in only eight of those characteristics, and the average disparity between Clallam County and the nation in all 39 of those characteristics is 36%. (See st.news/clallam.) Without a better match these statistics are not helpful in explaining Clallam County’s success in choosing presidents.
Without neatly available statistics to prove my point (or that might be used to disprove my point), I think the answer to Clallam County’s success lies in a combination of factors
First, a general decline in the forest products industry has led to a more diverse set of industries in Clallam County. That has resulted in a more middle-of-the-road electorate with a wider range of political views.
Second, the county’s voters are involved in governmental affairs. In early 1976, the year Clallam County last picked the wrong presidential candidate to win, the voters recalled two out of their three county commissioners, a first in the state’s history. In the 1976 general election, Clallam became just the second county in the state after King County, to adopt a home rule charter. Today, there are just seven home rule charter counties in Washington.
Third, Clallam’s active local Democratic and Republican parties and many vocal special interest groups, plus the many politically unaffiliated groups that opine continually on all sorts of political issues, inundate the Clallam County electorate with a wide range of arguments-conservative, liberal and centrist.
Over the years, I think this has resulted in elective political judgment that is more representative of the country than any other individual county.
The best indicator of how Clallam County might vote in November is how Democratic county voters voted in Washington’s recent primary, compared with the primaries in 2020 and 2022.
That these races have been swinging so positively, uniformly and dramatically in favor of the Democrats over the past four years — in the most consistent and accurate bellwether county in the country so far — should make Democrats generally optimistic about their prospects.
Ron Richards is a former Clallam County commissioner, lawyer and professional chemical engineer who lives in Port Angeles. He was a co-founder of Western Gas Resources, a natural gas processing Company.
Editor’ note: This column originally appeared in The Seattle Times on Sept. 18, 2024. — MD
