Does Vigo's bellwether voting status really mean much?

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 24 January 2016


For the last four presidential elections, I’ve been a sought-out “expert” on Vigo County’s bellwether status. Should you be unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Vigo County has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1952 missing only twice since 1888.


Initially, reporters sought me and Professor Kirby Goidel because we had polled during the 2000 and 2004 elections. We were the first, as far as we knew, to ever poll Vigo voters’ presidential preferences Since then, I am not aware of any scientific polling of the county’s preferences. Nevertheless, journalists continue to contact me for interviews.
                                               

This year, attention to Vigo’s bellwether phenomenon is receiving increased and early attention. A documentary production company, Three Blind Men Productions, has taken up residence in Vigo to document the bellwether effect. Filmmaker Don Campbell will have lived in Terre Haute for a year. I’ve been consulting (unpaid) with Don since the beginning of the project. Politico ran an article consisting of little more than a reporter stopping by a Pie and Politics meeting, the Republicans there were for Trump, and the article declares the bellhether is going for Trump. WFIU did a story on the Politico story and contacted me for a response to the article. Last Saturday, my living room was transformed into a television studio as Bob Abeshouse of Al Jazeera English interviewed me for two hours for an early March news documentary.



Whether political bellwethers exist is not much of a controversy among political scientists. As far as I can tell, the answer is “no.” Nevertheless, Vigo County’s record is impressive and makes for a good story and a different hook on the glut of presidential campaign news. I expect there to be more reporters and all variety of political storytellers showing up because of Vigo’s bellwether status.                                                  
                                                                                                                                           
Questions posed to me tend to be similar: “What accounts for Vigo’s amazing record in ‘getting it right’?” My answer:  I do not know why Vigo County has such a record of voting for the presidential winner and I don’t think anyone does.       
                                                                                                                                                                                        
Then I speculate on reasons why Vigo has such a remarkable record and respond to reasons posited to me by the journalist. A common one that is wrong, at least now and for the last couple of decades, is that Vigo is a microcosm of the United States. It is not. Vigo is poorer, more poverty stricken, whiter, older, fewer immigrants, less educated (despite four institutions of higher education residing here), more people with disabilities, more people without health insurance, higher unemployment rate, more reliant on manufacturing jobs, local ownership of business is more male, less minority, and Vigo is less urban than the U.S. is as a whole. According to information provided to me this weekend, Vigo also has more nonaligned voters than does the U.S. as a whole. Vigo County is not a microcosm of the United States and I doubt it ever was. 
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Another posited explanation is that issues of America are the issues of Vigo County. This one is hard to address because one would need to know what the issues were in the campaigns and what the local issues were. I’ve voted in six presidential elections in Vigo County and based on past polling, the most important local issue has been “jobs,” pretty much swamping all others. When is a presidential campaign not about jobs? Maybe the candidate that mentions jobs the most is who Vigo votes for. This might make for an interesting undergraduate research project. 
                                                                                                                                                                                              
My current “most sociologically best guess” points to the relative stability of the population in Vigo County. By stability, I mean there is neither a lot of out-migration nor a lot of in-migration. Being born here is almost the sole means of entry and dying here is almost the sole means of exit; thus, the social barriers and forces that separate us into like- minded “echo chambers,” jobs, religions, race, and social class, are muted when people first meet each other in school.     
                                                                                                                                                                                          
For example, four people become good friends in the second grade and remain adult friends despite one becoming a union carpenter, one a physical therapist, one chronically unemployed, and the other a local business owner. The four, I submit, may influence each other with their different points of view. By being friends, they gain a better appreciation of each other’s views, in a respectful manner and, perhaps, as they decide who to vote for, all those influences come to bear on their choice.

Tom Steiger:

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 30 August 2015


What would the ratings be for these early Republican presidential debates without Donald Trump? What are the indirect effects as well? How much more are people reading early presidential primary coverage just because of him? Arguably, no doubt it will be by Trump himself, that he is a job creator just given the coverage he receives.




The political professional class explains his rise to frontrunner among a jammed field because he is “just” tapping the frustrations and anger among a swath of the electorate. That swath appears to be growing then, as his poll numbers continue to rise despite gaffe after gaffe and his insistence on not playing by the “rules.” He’s such a “bad boy” demagogue.

A more sociological explanation would be to think about “authority.” Presidential aspirants campaign on three threads. The first is their qualifications to be president, which is not extensive, only to be a natural-born citizen and at least 35 years old. Taxi drivers have more formal qualifications than that. A traditional qualification for presidential authority is that the candidate be male, white and “successful” (meaning either rich and/or having some power in their life up to the point of running for president). No one questions if we are ready for a successful white male to be president.





Other informal qualifications matter, too. Can a woman be president, is America ready for an African American president, is s/he too old, is s/he too young. Of course, President Obama did not fit one of those traditional qualifications, but this has not led to a groundswell of otherwise racially diverse candidates. Tradition is a powerful force in politics, like going to Iowa.





The last thread is the plan to fix whatever is wrong with America. Funny how candidates never say, “America is great, don’t fix what is not broken, I promise to not change a thing.” One unstated qualification to be president apparently is to think America is not great and needs substantial, fundamental, radical change, that is unless you are the incumbent, then you “stay the course.”





Sometimes It’s not enough that our presidential candidates be people of accomplishment, whether it be deal maker, reality TV star, noted neurosurgeon, governor, senator, former CEO of a tech company, or be a white male natural-born citizen, the candidate that inspires devotion to them and their plan is going to be the candidate to beat. And that candidate must answer the big questions her/his following has. The mundane questions are answered in policy briefings, such as fixing all the programs that are messed up, even the ones that are not. What I am referring to here are the really big questions like “how to make American great again”, or “how to have a political revolution,” “how to achieve the higher ground”, “how to make the new century an American one” (that’s already 15 years old), “how to reignite the promise of America,” “how to create a ‘right to rise,’” among many others.





These three threads match up well to what sociologists see as three societal sources of authority: bureaucratic authority flows from technical qualifications; traditional authority flows from long-standing practices and; charismatic authority flows from devotion to the individual’s exceptional qualities, “heroism” or exemplary character, and the answers the individual provides to important questions. It is charismatic authority that is driving Donald Trump to frontrunner status. I am not a Trump supporter, but I can see that he inspires personal devotion through his acts of “heroism” (making disparaging remarks about women, disrespecting the press [who are only doing their jobs], being crass and crude), and his exemplary character focused on his business exploits and personal flair (reality star). Plus he offers simple fixes (“it’s simple, George, it’s simple”) to the big (political) questions of the day: how to make American great again. Send back the immigrants and make Mexico build a wall to keep its people in, take our jobs back from the Chinese, stop being PC, get tough with the Saudis and force them to pump more oil, seize the oil fields in Iraq, stop taxing rich people (corporations), but tax those corporations that export jobs overseas.





As I finish this essay, Trump’s poll numbers have increased to 32 percent of Republican voters. Trump dominates the news with more vitriol toward Megyn Kelly and throws Univision’s Jorge Ramos out of a press conference. Trump’s growing legion of devoted followers may see these actions as “heroism” and exceptional character, not boorish, racist or misogynist.