via flickr/Tim Tai
Claire McCaskill
Remember back to 2016.
On the evening of the general election, Nate Silver’s poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight published that Donald Trump only had a 29 percent chance of winning the electoral college in the presidential race. No matter your party, it was a little shocking—even reportedly to staffers in Trump’s own camp–when he won over Hillary Clinton, because of the oddsmakers’ forecasts. Trying to predict the outcome of Missouri’s Senate race (incumbent Claire McCaskill versus Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley) is even harder. According to Real Clear Politics, neither candidate has had more than a four-point lead over the other in polls the entire race—it’s within the margin of error (read more in our election guide here). But that didn’t stop us from asking an expert what we should be watching when the returns start coming in.
Enter said expert: Professor Dave Robertson, the University of Missouri–St. Louis’ political science department chair. It’s well-documented that Missouri is no longer really a bellwether state. Voters used to select, without fail, the winning candidate nationwide. That is, until one in particular: Missourians voted for Senator John McCain over then-Senator Barack Obama for president in the 2008 general election. But just barely. McCain won the state’s 11 electoral votes by 1 percent. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, won the state by a wide margin in 2016—18 or so points. Still, are there any bellwether counties left here?
“If it’s me, I’m going to be looking at two counties in particular,” Robertson said. “One is Clay County, north of Kansas City, and the other is Jefferson County, here.”
In the 2016 general election, Roy Blunt, Missouri’s Republican senator, won over Jason Kander by about 6,000 votes in Jefferson County—53,218 to 46,975. Donald Trump won the county with 69,036 votes; Hillary Clinton garnered 31,568. Jefferson County, with its large population of working-class voters, used to vote Democrat, Robertson says, so the result was somewhat surprising. Clay County, he says, is similar. In the 2016 general election, Kander won with 55,322 votes; Blunt recorded 49,173.
“I would say that McCaskill probably has to win Jefferson County to hold down the margin that Hawley has in other parts of the state. That’s going to be a very important county. Even though the total vote isn’t as strong as St. Louis County, it will be an indicator of McCaskill’s strength.”
What about St. Louis County? It makes up nearly 1 in 5 Missouri voters—and if McCaskill is to win, Robertson says, she “is going to have to carry that by a substantial margin, probably over 100,000 votes...probably even more.” If she can get 60 percent of the vote, it will go a long way, he says. Another county to watch is St. Charles. “Blunt only got 52 percent of the vote there,” Robertson says, “so that could be very, very close.”
