The hometown of Eugene Debs and Tommy John passes the torch to the birthplace of George Washington and James Monroe.
At least that’s how it appears, for now.
It was fun while it lasted — 132 years to be exact. Journalists, filmmakers and political history buffs from around the world have wandered into Vigo County since the 1990s, after folks at this newspaper detected the community’s historical penchant for siding with winning presidential candidates. All tried to figure out the special sauce in Vigo’s fluid voting trends.
Maybe it was the mix of rural and urban residents, colleges and blue-collar factories, with roots in organized labor and a handful of wealthy business families. Or maybe it was just dumb luck.
My theory is all-of-the-above. Plus, with Vigo’s low voter turnouts in the 21st century, the more popular candidates could inspire enough like-minded people to go to the polls, while a crucial portion of the other party’s voters stayed home.
Regardless, somehow Vigo voters mirrored the nation’s political will for parts of three centuries. They favored the victorious presidential hopefuls in 31 of 33 elections dating back to 1888, including each of the last 16, diverging only in 1908 and 1952.
Vigo’s streak seems destined to snap in 2020. County voters gave incumbent Republican Donald Trump a resounding victory here. The president got 56.2% of the local votes, while Democrat former Vice President Joe Biden got 41.5%. But the national race, as of Friday afternoon, suggested Biden will win the presidency. He led in the popular voting with 50.5% (or 73,912,247 total votes) to Trump’s 47.7% (69,797,447 votes). Biden also led in Electoral College votes, 253-214. Barring a successful legal challenge by Trump, Vigo County will have chosen a losing candidate for the first time in 68 years.
No other county came close to Vigo’s long-term accuracy, according to Massachusetts political historian Dave Leip, who runs the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Still, a cluster of counties had matched the national outcomes, consecutively, going back to the 1940s, ‘50s and early ‘60s. The list of those with perfect runs included Valencia County, New Mexico (aligned with the nation since 1948), and four spot-on since 1964 — Ottawa County, Ohio; Westmoreland County, Virginia; and Juneau and Sawyer counties in Wisconsin.
Biden carried only one of those bellwethers — Westmoreland in Virginia.
The county of 18,000 residents sits between Washington, D.C., and Chesapeake Bay. Presidents Washington and Monroe were born there. And presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama and Trump have carried Westmoreland in the elections. Its pendulum swung again this year, as 53.7% of voters backed Biden over Trump, who got 44.4%.
It’s questionable whether Vigo County’s renowned voting pendulum will swing much in coming years. Polarization that has beset the rest of the country seemed less prevalent in the past. As Trump got elected in 2016, straight-ticket voting in Vigo surged to 41% — its highest level since at least the 1990s. It remained at that level in the 2018 midterm election. An even larger percentage of Vigo voters — 46.2% — chose straight-tickets. Partisanship has replaced flexibility.
Perhaps it’s a quirk that will come and go with Trump. Or, maybe the past 132 years were a quirk.
For now, though, the rest of reliably Republican Indiana will no doubt welcome this finally-coming-to-their-senses moment for the maverick county on the banks of the Wabash, ushering purple oddball Vigo into the state’s deep-red political club. Vigo did so by joining 87 other Hoosier counties in sticking with a president who may fail to be reelected.
Not once since 1888 has Vigo County done that.
Mark Bennett is a columnist at the (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
