"I can tell you one thing: Terre Haute citizens are anything but poorly informed....The people gathered at Grand Traverse weren’t the political neophytes and gadflies often chalked up as Trump voters."
12/4/15, "Trump County, USA," Politico, Adam Wren
"America’s most reliable bellwether county has fallen for the wild man from New York."
"The most accurate pundits in the history of American presidential
politics reside far from the Beltway, on a 403-square mile patch of land
along the western border of Indiana. At the intersections of U.S.
Highways 40 and 41, and off Interstate 70, you find yourself in 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.”...
And, in nearly every presidential election since 1888,
voters here in this blue-collar county have selected the winning
candidate, missing only twice: Once, in 1908, when they opted for
Williams Jennings Bryan instead of William Howard Taft, and again in
1952, when they chose Adlai Stevenson rather than Dwight D. Eisenhower....
When I spent two days traveling around its gathering places and
watering holes, I discovered that, while the county’s Democrats have,
for their part, coalesced around Clinton, its Republicans mostly wanted
to talk about just one candidate: Donald Trump.
And if Trump can make it here—in this hollowed-out county of swing voters, union halls, three universities and a knot of CSX railroad lines, where voters seem to have a knack for predicting unpredictable elections—he can make it anywhere....
Another thing that makes Vigo County unique is its apparent number of swing voters. Of its 76,981 registered voters, according to data from the Vigo County Voter Registration Office, 30,290 are Democrats, and 10,280 are Republican. And an eyebrow-raising 40,570 are unaffiliated or have never voted or only vote in generals....
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