Vigo County, with its 108,000 residents and its ho-hum county seat, Terre Haute, situated along the Wabash River. Terre Haute is the land of Clabber Girl Baking Powder—and its citizens call it the “Crossroads of America.”
This county has predicted almost every Presidential election winner – only missed two – since 1888 and every single one since 1952. THEY seem to be predicting – right now – that Donald Trump will win the Republican Presidential primary in Indiana.
“It’s obviously because of our extraordinary intelligence and good sense,” said Democrat Senator Evan Bayh, who was born in Vigo County. “It’s classic middle America. Small businesses. Family farms. Community schools. We care more about common sense results than we do about party labels and ideology. … You don’t get the excesses of New York or California. We keep it between the 40-yard-lines.”
Although political scientists say that there is no such thing as a bellwether county, the record in Vigo County intrigued Don Campbell, a documentary film maker from Brooklyn to move to Terre Haute, where he is investigating the bellwether phenomenon until next November as part of Bellwether 2016.
BELLWETHER, a documentary web-series, will cover the 2016 presidential election through the eyes and experiences of voters in Terre Haute and Vigo County, the most consistently accurate “bellwether” in the nation.
From Labor Day 2015 through Election Day 2016 BELLWETHER will embed in Terre Haute to capture intimate stories of people and places that reflect factors shaping American life. A counter-balance to punditry and prognostication, BELLWETHER investigates what makes people here the “great predictor” of the greatest horserace in America.
Mr. Campbell is looking for support via a Kickstarter campaign. If you are interested in supporting him, there is a link on his page, http://www.bellwether2016.org/
Vigo County seems to be unusual in that they have a large proportion of unaffiliated voters, some who say they vote Republican in one election, then Democrat in another. Obama narrowly took Vigo County in the last two elections, but some voters who went for Obama are in the Trump camp this time around. Says Terre Haute mayor, Duke Bennett:
“We’ve seen a change here where the people are voting more for the person than the party,” Bennett said while pacing outside of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 85, awaiting his fate. “Just because there’s more Democrats doesn’t mean that we always vote Democratic.” It’s a trend that he believes could tip the county Republican in 2016.
And Randy Gentry, the Republican County Chair said that although he won’t predict a winner right now,
…. there’s one image Gentry can’t get out of his head. Sitting at the Republican booth at the Vigo County Fair this summer, he fielded endless requests for Trump campaign swag.
“All I ever heard about was Trump,” Gentry said. “The people who came into the fairgrounds said, ‘Can I have a Trump button? Can I have a Trump sign?’ At that point, he was just kind of starting this whole thing out. If you poll people on the street here, Trump would be a very strong candidate here right now.
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