One Washington state county has predicted the winner of the last 11 elections and are struggling with this one between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
‘Bellweather counties’ are known as areas that choose the winner from election-to-election regardless of party.
While they’ve become less of a narrative as political polarization has grown in the US, Clallam County has gotten every election ‘right’ since 1980.
Now, with a close election between Harris and Trump under two months away, residents are still unsure which way the county will swing, with Democrats reinvigorated by Harris but Republicans still furious about crime and inflation.
Perhaps the only thing the county’s Trump and Harris voters agreed on? The debate changed nothing.
Independent voter and Trump supporter William Lewis, 73, says he ‘didn’t learn anything I don’t already know’ from the debate and that the former president is the clear and obvious choice: ‘Anybody that doesn’t see that, I don’t know what they’re looking at,’
He told the LA Times the contest in Philadelphia ‘was just the same stuff with both of them in the same room instead of different places.’
Fellow independent voter Jeanne Viramonte, 74 feels the same way but only because she’s sick and tired of looking at Trump.
‘His views on women are horrible, so, no, I’m not going to watch him. I’m not going to vote for him’.
While the state has predicated the president in the last 11 elections, it has traditionally taken a slight Democrat lean.
In 2018 and 2022, the state helped elect both of its Democrat Senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.
However, Cantwell only won Clallam by 3.4 points and Murray by an even slimmer 1.4 points.
Furthermore, while Joe Biden won the county in 2020 by 3.4 points, incumbent Democrat Governor Jay Inslee actually lost Clallam to a Republican by 0.6 points.
Washington State runs a ‘jungle’ primary where the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party.
Cantwell won the primary overall but with just 55 percent of the vote in the August primary. She faces Republican Raul Garcia in November.
Perhaps more enticing for Republicans is the Democrat nominee for governor, Bob Ferguson, could only manage 44.9 percent of the votes in that primary.
However, he still beat his Republican opponent in the general election, Dave Reichert, by 17 points.
With the formerly strong logging industry largely hollowed out, the county’s 80,000 residents are now heavily reliant on tourism.
‘There’s a fair amount of distrust of both political parties and what kind of nonsense they’re trying to sell us,’ said business owner Sam Grello, 37.
‘The bottom line is ultimately who will help our community the most. Are you willing to look at what the problems are and deal with them? Or are you an ideologue? Do ideas or people come first?’
Grello had planned to hold his nose for Joe Biden but will enthusiastically cast a ballot for Harris.
‘I won’t be embarrassed to have her as president. I won’t have to think about her so much. I want to be able to focus on my job, and not worry about the president doing theirs.’
However, Biden’s incumbency is a huge turnoff to more conservative-leaning voters, like 72-year-old Pam Blakeman, a county Republican leader who hates inflation and crime.
“I don’t go out to restaurants like I used to. It’s way too expensive. I used to walk all over, wherever. I don’t anymore. My guard is up”, she said.
Kim Butler, 66, adds: ‘I think they’re spending money on programs that are just bankrupting our country, like student loans. They have no authority…They’re just trying to buy votes’.
Harris is still expected to carry Washington, as Cook Political Report has the state listed as a ‘Solid D’ but counties like Clallam could be the canary in the coal mine for Democrats in November.
And with no party registration for voters in the county, America will wait and see which way it swings when the ballots are counted.
