For decades if reporters and political scientists wanted to find out how a presidential election was going to go, all they needed to do was study New Mexico.
Voting for the first time in 1912 just months after becoming a state, New Mexico entered an era of uncanny accuracy with its voters casting their ballots for the winner during a run of 64 years.
The wheels fell off the wagon in 1976 when the Land of Enchantment’s voters narrowly went for President Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter by a 50% to 48% margin.
Ever since that election, the state’s electoral invincibility has been a less than certain thing, with New Mexico backing the presidential winner in nine of the last 11 elections, giving its five electoral votes to Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Even so, according to a study put together by the site Ballotpedia, New Mexico has an overall high 89.3% presidential election accuracy rate, substantially above neighboring Arizona at 78.6% and Colorado with 74.2%.
Whatever the competitive dynamic between New Mexico and Texas in other areas, in the realm of presidential politics the Lone Star state comes in with a lower accuracy rate of 64.5%.
For the most part, states in the West have tended to have higher election accuracy rates than the states of other regions, with numbers ranging from 74% to 89%.
The number one most accurate state? Ohio—with a 90.3% rate. How to explain? According to the book The Bellweather: Why Ohio Picks the President, the Buckeye State’s demographics, in terms of gender, ethnicity, and religion, uncannily mimic the larger country, meaning that “what’s special about Ohio is that it’s not special at all.”
Put another way, according to the Almanac of American Politics, Ohio has been viewed as a “great test market, close to the national average in income levels, urban-rural balance, and ethnic mix, as well as partisan proclivities.”
That doesn’t mean that Ohio is always correct: it voted against winners Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, John Kennedy in 1960 and Joe Biden in 2020
The state with the lowest accuracy rate? Mississippi, at 45.2%.
October 29, 2024
By Garry Boulard
