Before there was Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Bill Mitchell’s Yard Signs, there was Vigo County, Indiana. The half-urban, half-rural area about 80 miles southwest of Indianapolis has voted for the winner of the presidential race in 30 of the last 32 elections, and it hasn’t missed since 1956—not even in 2000, when it went for George W. Bush over Al Gore 49.7 to 48.5 percent.
But the streak is vulnerable Tuesday. Multiple Hoosier political experts working in academia and campaigns told THE WEEKLY STANDARD they expect Republican nominee Donald Trump to win the roughly 108,000-person county. If Hillary Clinton captures an Electoral College victory, as the majority of polls and forecast models predict, Vigo County may end up being more like a microcosm of the nation’s shifting political tendencies than an expert prognosticator.
