When it comes to picking the winner in Presidential elections, West Virginia has more often than not supported the ultimate victor in the past 30 elections. Figures compiled by Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, show that Mountain State voters have sided with the rest of the country 77 percent of the time in Presidential elections since 1896.
Here are the seven times West Virginia missed:
–1916. West Virginia was a Republican state at the time and voters picked GOP nominee Charles Hughes over Democratic winner Woodrow Wilson, but not by much. Hughes finished just 2,721 votes ahead of Wilson.
–1952. West Virginia went Democratic (along with most of the country) in the 1932 election of Franklin Roosevelt, and remained staunchly Democrat in Presidential elections until the latter half of the century. We were one of just nine states in the 1952 election that backed Democrat Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower, who won in a landslide.
–1968. Republican Richard Nixon won the election easily over Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Independent George Wallace, but West Virginia was still staunchly Democratic and Humphrey carried the Mountain State by nine points.
–1980. The Reagan Revolution dominated the country, but the Gipper fell short in West Virginia, which was one of only six states and Washington, D.C., that backed Jimmy Carter’s re-election.
–1988. Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis lost in a landslide to George H.W. Bush, but Dukakis carried West Virginia 52 percent to 47 percent.
–2008. West Virginia’s red tilt was well underway by this election. While the country was electing Democrat Barack Obama, West Virginia backed Republican John McCain.
–2012. History repeated itself four years later. Republican Mitt Romney got an overwhelming 62 percent of the vote here, but President Obama won the election 51 percent to 47 percent.
So what state is best at predicting the winner? “The Buckeye State, long recognized as perhaps the nation’s premier presidential swing state, deserves its status,” Kondik writes. “In the 30 Presidential elections since 1896, Ohio has correctly picked the winner 28 times.”
New Mexico has only missed being on the winning side twice as well, but it trails Ohio because it was not admitted to the union until 1912.
The state that is the least likely indicator of how the rest of the country will vote is Mississippi. According to Kondik, the Magnolia State has been in the majority of the country in just 13 of the last 30 Presidential elections.
In fact, the states that have most often missed the tide since 1896 are in the deep South. “This is no surprise,” writes Kondik. “In the early 1900s, most southern states voted for Democratic losers before turning Republican, while occasionally supporting third-party candidates in the middle of the century.”
So in 2016 will West Virginia do what it has done 77 percent of the time since 1896 and choose the winning side or be an outlier as it has been lately? That’s hard to say now, but it’s worth noting that Sabato’s 2016 Crystal Ball Electoral College Rating has West Virginia as “Safe Republican.”
Ohio? Yes, Sabato says that’s a toss-up.