Draft:List of election bellwether states in the United States

Submission declined on 3 November 2023 by MicrobiologyMarcus (talk).

This submission is not suitable for Wikipedia. Please read "What Wikipedia is not" for more information.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted.
If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors.
Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted.

Where to get help

If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews.
If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.

How to improve a draft

Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia.
Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup
Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references
Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article
Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article
Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources

You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article.

Improving your odds of a speedy review

To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags.

Add tags to your draft

Editor resources

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs

Declined by MicrobiologyMarcus 6 months ago. Last edited by KangarooGymnast 5 months ago. Reviewer: Inform author.

Resubmit

Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

Comment: The article ought to demonstrate notability for lists (WP:NLIST) by demonstrating coverage of where the group of items in the list is covered by outside sources. As the article appears now, it is a violation of WP:SYNTH as original research. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish•growths)} 17:26, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

In U.S. presidential elections, there are often certain states that vote more in line with the national trend than other states. Whereas most states tend to vote reliably for one party, these states commonly swing back-and-forth between parties, creating a bellwhether effect where the winner in these states is also the winner nationally.

Current bellwhether states[edit]

The most recent presidential election took place in 2020 where Democrat Joe Biden beat Republican Donald Trump. Biden flipped five states that Trump had previously won in 2016.^[1] These five states currently hold the longest active bellwhether streaks in the country.^[2]

Overview of bellwether states in federal elections
Start of streak	State	Election cycles	2020 winner	Votes		2020 runner-up	Last deviation
2008	Michigan	4	Joe Biden	2,804,040	2,649,852	Donald Trump	2004
2008	Pennsylvania	4	Joe Biden	3,458,229	3,377,674	Donald Trump	2004
2008	Wisconsin	4	Joe Biden	1,630,866	1,610,184	Donald Trump	2004
2016	Arizona	2	Joe Biden	1,672,143	1,661,686	Donald Trump	2012
2016	Georgia	2	Joe Biden	2,473,633	2,461,854	Donald Trump	2012

Historic bellwhether states[edit]

There are 14 bellwhether streaks that stretch back over a period of at least 12 consecutive election cycles.^[3]

Overview of bellwether states in federal elections
Streak	State	Election cycles	Streak broken	Statewide winner	Votes		Nationwide winner
1912–1972	Nevada	16	1976	Gerald Ford	101,273	92,479	Jimmy Carter
1912–1972	New Mexico	16	1976	Gerald Ford	211,419	201,148	Jimmy Carter
1964–2016	Ohio	14	2020	Donald Trump	3,154,834	2,679,165	Joe Biden
1920–1972	Illinois	14	1976	Gerald Ford	2,364,269	2,271,295	Jimmy Carter
1904–1956	Idaho	14	1960	Richard Nixon	161,597	138,853	John F. Kennedy
1904–1956	Montana	14	1960	Richard Nixon	141,841	134,891	John F. Kennedy
1892–1944	Maryland	14	1948	Thomas E. Dewey	294,814	286,521	Harry S. Truman
1828–1880	Pennsylvania	14	1884	James G. Blaine	478,804	392,785	Grover Cleveland
1904–1952	Missouri	13	1956	Adlai Stevenson	918,273	914,289	Dwight D. Eisenhower
1960–2004	Missouri	12	2008	John McCain	1,445,814	1,441,911	Barack Obama
1952–1996	Delaware	12	2000	Al Gore	180,068	137,288	George W. Bush
1920–1964	Minnesota	12	1968	Hubert Humphrey	857,738	658,643	Richard Nixon
1912–1956	Arizona	12	1960	Richard Nixon	221,241	176,781	John F. Kennedy
1896–1940	Ohio	12	1944	Thomas E. Dewey	1,582,293	1,570,763	Franklin D. Roosevelt