Definition of bellwether states

[⛄]

How many times must a state/county/city etc. have voted for the winning candidate in your assessment in order to be called a bellwether region?

[⛄]

I'll make according maps to each of the five options.

≥ 2

≥ 3

≥ 4

≥ 5

≥ 6

[Antonio the Sixth]

That "voting for the winning candidate" criterion is utterly meaningless, especially in a close election (say the nation supports the Democrat by 1 point: is the state that went D by 50 points a better bellwhether than the state that went R by one point?). Bellwhethers should be defined by the similarity of their electoral results with the national results (similarity that can be defined in an easy binary way in two party systems as the difference between two margins).

[SWE]

If you go by popular vote, New Mexico went with the winner in the past 9 elections

[ElectionsGuy]

I think 2 is good enough for me, although I prefer to measure bellwethers by how close they are to the national margin, not by how many times they've voted for the winning candidate. Why? Because a state could be one point away and not vote for the winner, but still be the closest to the national margin.

[Miles]

It needs to be fairly close to the overall margin (either way) and not be overly elastic.

[Bozo the Clown]

States within 5 points of the popular vote. For example, 2008 overestimates Indiana's importance because of the 2012 spread favoring Romney despite losing.

[Bozo the Clown]

Here's what I would define as recent and upcoming bellwether states.

North Carolina- leans GOP
Ohio- barely GOP
Florida- toss up
Georgia- toss up
Iowa- toss up
Maine- toss up
Minnesota- barely Dem
New Hampshire- barely Dem
Wisconsin- leans Dem
Pennsylvania- leans Dem
Colorado- leans Dem
Virginia- leans Dem
New Jersey- leans Dem

Maine is only because of how they vote in non-presidential elections. They're so far from their presidential cycle that I included the state.