Meet the County That Predicts US Presidential Elections.
Want to know who the next US President will be? History gives you the answer.
Vigo county, Indiana. An unusual place with an unusual power. This county has been predicting the next US president since 1888 correctly except for just two times. This means, that on the last 33 elections, Vigo county’s choice was the next US president. This amounts to 94% accuracy rate in over 100 years.
What makes this county so special? Is it luck? It does not have a huge number of residents to be able to impact the voting count but still manages to be right 94% of the time. What makes it even more interesting that even though it lies in the fairly republican state of Indiana, it has been shifting from Democrat to Republican during the presidential years, making it a leading indicator in predicting the next US president with no discernable bias regarding political affiliations.
Many theories have been put through to explain this phenomenon ranging from pure luck, to the demographics that represent the USA as a whole, and even the student population in the area. But none of these theories can explain well this huge predictive ability, for instance, the demographics of Vigo County are less diversified than the country’s average thus implying that it is supposed to be weaker in representing all Americans. As for the student’s population, it is known that generally, the students’ vote is mostly Democratic but this conflicts with the fact that the County did predict a lot of times a Republican win despite its big students’ presence.
Surely no statistical relationship is perfect and on the sample 33, the 94% are not as strong as we might think but it is still very interesting to see the next results and compare them with Vigo county’s choice. The most important thing remains that the next president will be able to deliver what the American people needs and works on bringing them together.
