Much is made of Missouri being the bellwether for presidential elections in the United States, having voted for Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 and every other elected president except in Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 and, probably, Barack Obama in 2008.
Having likely voted for John McCain last week, the title of bellwether will then go to Nevada, which has voted for the winner in every presidential election since Woodrow Wilson in 1912, excepting Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Both these states were admitted to the Union long before their bellwether status was established. Missouri had cast votes for 21 presidents previous to Roosevelt, voting with the nation 52% of the time, and Nevada had voted 12 times previous to Wilson, going with the crowd exactly 50% of the time.
Rounded up, these both average out to 73% over the length of their statehood, but I am assuming that there is another state that has a better election record. Does anyone know which it would be?
That’s where I got the statistics in the OP from, but that doesn’t answer my question, which is what state has voted for the President-elect most often since its induction into the United States?
Presumably the state-by-state election results are available on the web or in print somewhere, along with a list showing when each state was admitted to the union. So if this is something you really care about, you could crunch the numbers yourself.
If you’re going by pure percentage, it’s going to be New Mexico; 1912 was the year we were admitted into the Union.
I’ve gone through the numbers for the first 32 states alphabetically (Alabama to New York) and nobody in that range beats NM’s 92%. Illinois is second with about 85%. You can find results for historical elections at: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections Results for 1856-present are conveniently graphed. For earlier elections you have to dig a little to find the data, but it’s there.