Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story misidentified the location of Jefferson Parish in relation to New Orleans.
Editor's note: One of the most popular methods used by serious election watchers to get an early glimpse of how close races are going are "bellwethers." David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, has compiled a list for USA TODAY of bellwether counties for six closely contested Senate races. He explains how bellwethers work and what criteria he used for selecting them.
If you're monitoring election results Tuesday night, you may find that it could be a long and frustrating evening waiting for local election officials to do their job and post results. One early way to get a sense of what is happening in each state is to hover your arrow key over your state map and find the bellwethers. These are geographic areas (usually counties but can be cities, towns, wards, precincts, parishes) that accurately reflect how a state will vote.
When I started doing research for local clients more than 30 years ago, I used to go to the polling place that was a bellwether area and get those results first. That gave me a sense of how successful the campaign was going to be. The more local races I did, the more I realized that these little areas were remarkable indicators for a district's vote. At first, it was just based on historical data but as I developed this model, I've learned and added components. If one of the bellwethers fails to be an indicator, it filters itself out from consideration in the next election.
Several factors are used to filter away bellwether areas from election to election. Each has its own weight and priority. To accurately gauge the accuracy of these bellwethers, I looked at how closely they mirrored the statewide totals for multiple midterm races. Also taken into consideration were several other factors such as a candidate's ties to the county or unusual activities in the area that might have an impact on the vote.
The political landscape of Tuesday night's returns will include some unturned stones, dirty rocks and lots of sharp glass from county to county. Candidates from all parties, and their organizations, have crawled through it all. But somewhere in the terrain you will find a few electoral diamonds in the rough.
THE BELLWETHERS
Arkansas: The
three bellwethers are all relatively rural counties far from any major
cities — two in the northern region and one on the southern border:
• Independence County, 70 miles north of Little Rock along the southeastern edge of the Ozark Mountains, has a population of 36,997. The population is 94% white, and the poverty rate, at 23.6%, is almost 10 points higher than the state average.
• Van Buren is in many ways a smaller version of Independence. Located two counties to the southwest, it also has an almost entirely white population — 96% — and a similar poverty rate. Almost one in four residents is 65 or older.
• Columbia County, on the Louisiana border, has a similar poverty rate to the other two bellwethers, but its racial demographics are far different; more than a third of the county's residents are black.
Colorado:
Two of the bellwethers are nestled next to Denver, while the third is far to the north on the Wyoming border. Voter registration in all three closely resembles the state's overall mix of 31% Democrats, 31% Republicans and 38% independents and other parties:
• Jefferson County, one of the huge suburban counties ringing Denver, has remained relatively stable in population over the past 15 years after decades of explosive growth. It has a higher per capita income level than the state average and a lower poverty rate.
• Broomfield County, just to the north of the city of Denver, is a city-county of 59,000 carved out of four counties in the 1990s. Like Jefferson County, it is relatively affluent, with a poverty level well below the state and national averages.
• Larimer County is the home of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Hispanics comprise only 10.9% of the county's population, about half of the statewide 21%.
Iowa:
The three bellwethers are similar in size, ranking 15th, 17th and 18th in population in the state. None vary greatly from the state's nearly even distribution of registered Republicans and Democrats:
• Jasper County, on the eastern outskirts of Des Moines' suburbs, has educational levels lower than the state's averages, but income is near the state's norm.
• Marshall County, just north of Jasper, has a significantly higher percentage of Hispanics (19.4%) than the state average (5.5%).
• Webster County, in north-central Iowa, has lower-than-average educational levels, and household income lags well behind the state average.
Kansas:
Though the states' two bellwethers differ greatly in size, they both reflect the state's heavy concentration of registered Republicans:
• Riley County, the seventh-largest county in Kansas, contains two of the state's biggest employers — the U.S. Army's Fort Riley and Kansas State University. Compared to the rest of the state, it has higher educational levels, a higher poverty level and a smaller percentage of those 65 and older.
• Jefferson County, is the 30th-largest county in the state, with fewer than 19,000 residents. Though it has fewer college graduates than the statewide average, and the average income is about at the state average, the poverty level is only 7.4%, compared with the state's 13.2% level.
Louisiana:
The four bellwether parishes are scattered across the state, from the New Orleans metro area to the northern river basins to the heart of Cajun country.
• Jefferson Parish, just west of New Orleans, took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but has rebounded in recent years and is the second-largest parish in the state. It has a significantly higher percentage of Hispanics (13.4%) and immigrants (11%) than the state averages.
• Ouachita Parish. Located in northeastern Louisiana, is also one of the larger parishes in the state, with a population of about 156,000. Blacks comprise 37% of the population, while Hispanics are only 2%.
• Webster Parish, near Shreveport in the northwestern region of the state, has about 40,000 residents and has been slowly shrinking in population for several decades. About two-thirds of the population is white, and one-third is black.
• St. Martin Parish claims to be the parish "where Cajun began." More than 20% of the parish's residents speak French as the primary language in their homes.
North Carolina:
The two bellwethers offer stark contrasts in size, demographics and geography:
• Forsyth County, located in the state's central Piedmont region, is fourth-largest in population in North Carolina. It contains Winston-Salem, the state's fourth largest city. The population is a blend of two-thirds white, 27% black and 12% Hispanic.
• Watauga County, with one-fourth of Forsyth's population, is on the western edge of the state in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. The population is 95% white. Though 38% have college degrees — far above the average for the state or the nation — the county's poverty level is 29%, far above the state's 16.8% level.
Editor's note: One of the most popular methods used by serious election watchers to get an early glimpse of how close races are going are "bellwethers." David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, has compiled a list for USA TODAY of bellwether counties for six closely contested Senate races. He explains how bellwethers work and what criteria he used for selecting them.
If you're monitoring election results Tuesday night, you may find that it could be a long and frustrating evening waiting for local election officials to do their job and post results. One early way to get a sense of what is happening in each state is to hover your arrow key over your state map and find the bellwethers. These are geographic areas (usually counties but can be cities, towns, wards, precincts, parishes) that accurately reflect how a state will vote.
When I started doing research for local clients more than 30 years ago, I used to go to the polling place that was a bellwether area and get those results first. That gave me a sense of how successful the campaign was going to be. The more local races I did, the more I realized that these little areas were remarkable indicators for a district's vote. At first, it was just based on historical data but as I developed this model, I've learned and added components. If one of the bellwethers fails to be an indicator, it filters itself out from consideration in the next election.
Several factors are used to filter away bellwether areas from election to election. Each has its own weight and priority. To accurately gauge the accuracy of these bellwethers, I looked at how closely they mirrored the statewide totals for multiple midterm races. Also taken into consideration were several other factors such as a candidate's ties to the county or unusual activities in the area that might have an impact on the vote.
The political landscape of Tuesday night's returns will include some unturned stones, dirty rocks and lots of sharp glass from county to county. Candidates from all parties, and their organizations, have crawled through it all. But somewhere in the terrain you will find a few electoral diamonds in the rough.
THE BELLWETHERS
• Independence County, 70 miles north of Little Rock along the southeastern edge of the Ozark Mountains, has a population of 36,997. The population is 94% white, and the poverty rate, at 23.6%, is almost 10 points higher than the state average.
• Van Buren is in many ways a smaller version of Independence. Located two counties to the southwest, it also has an almost entirely white population — 96% — and a similar poverty rate. Almost one in four residents is 65 or older.
• Columbia County, on the Louisiana border, has a similar poverty rate to the other two bellwethers, but its racial demographics are far different; more than a third of the county's residents are black.
Two of the bellwethers are nestled next to Denver, while the third is far to the north on the Wyoming border. Voter registration in all three closely resembles the state's overall mix of 31% Democrats, 31% Republicans and 38% independents and other parties:
• Jefferson County, one of the huge suburban counties ringing Denver, has remained relatively stable in population over the past 15 years after decades of explosive growth. It has a higher per capita income level than the state average and a lower poverty rate.
• Broomfield County, just to the north of the city of Denver, is a city-county of 59,000 carved out of four counties in the 1990s. Like Jefferson County, it is relatively affluent, with a poverty level well below the state and national averages.
• Larimer County is the home of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Hispanics comprise only 10.9% of the county's population, about half of the statewide 21%.
The three bellwethers are similar in size, ranking 15th, 17th and 18th in population in the state. None vary greatly from the state's nearly even distribution of registered Republicans and Democrats:
• Jasper County, on the eastern outskirts of Des Moines' suburbs, has educational levels lower than the state's averages, but income is near the state's norm.
• Marshall County, just north of Jasper, has a significantly higher percentage of Hispanics (19.4%) than the state average (5.5%).
• Webster County, in north-central Iowa, has lower-than-average educational levels, and household income lags well behind the state average.
Though the states' two bellwethers differ greatly in size, they both reflect the state's heavy concentration of registered Republicans:
• Riley County, the seventh-largest county in Kansas, contains two of the state's biggest employers — the U.S. Army's Fort Riley and Kansas State University. Compared to the rest of the state, it has higher educational levels, a higher poverty level and a smaller percentage of those 65 and older.
• Jefferson County, is the 30th-largest county in the state, with fewer than 19,000 residents. Though it has fewer college graduates than the statewide average, and the average income is about at the state average, the poverty level is only 7.4%, compared with the state's 13.2% level.
The four bellwether parishes are scattered across the state, from the New Orleans metro area to the northern river basins to the heart of Cajun country.
• Jefferson Parish, just west of New Orleans, took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but has rebounded in recent years and is the second-largest parish in the state. It has a significantly higher percentage of Hispanics (13.4%) and immigrants (11%) than the state averages.
• Ouachita Parish. Located in northeastern Louisiana, is also one of the larger parishes in the state, with a population of about 156,000. Blacks comprise 37% of the population, while Hispanics are only 2%.
• Webster Parish, near Shreveport in the northwestern region of the state, has about 40,000 residents and has been slowly shrinking in population for several decades. About two-thirds of the population is white, and one-third is black.
• St. Martin Parish claims to be the parish "where Cajun began." More than 20% of the parish's residents speak French as the primary language in their homes.
The two bellwethers offer stark contrasts in size, demographics and geography:
• Forsyth County, located in the state's central Piedmont region, is fourth-largest in population in North Carolina. It contains Winston-Salem, the state's fourth largest city. The population is a blend of two-thirds white, 27% black and 12% Hispanic.
• Watauga County, with one-fourth of Forsyth's population, is on the western edge of the state in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. The population is 95% white. Though 38% have college degrees — far above the average for the state or the nation — the county's poverty level is 29%, far above the state's 16.8% level.
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