For a Republican to carry Nevada, Reno and its Washoe County will have to play a role. That happened back in 2000 and 2004, when the presidential race was close on the other side of the state in populous and perennially Democratic Clark County (Las Vegas). Over the past four presidential contests, Washoe County was Nevada’s only one to pick a winner every time, although Barack Obama didn’t need its help thanks to giant Clark County wins.
With a population over 800,000, Hamilton County is Ohio’s third-largest, and has helped swing the state to the winning side in presidential elections. There’s a near balance in Ohio that enables it to swing between parties. On one side are 50 rural and small-town counties that despite their size consistently deliver Republican margins of up to 200,000 votes. On the other side are Hamilton and other counties with big cities and suburbs that delivered even margins for Obama.
Loudoun County is part of a 2.5 million-population region in Northern Virginia that can deliver massive wins. In the past four presidential elections, Loudoun has picked all winners. Back in 2000, Loudoun went Republican by 11,500 votes, while the entire region did so by less than 5,000. Eight years later, Obama won Loudoun, and the region delivered Obama a 226,000-vote win that almost equaled his win statewide.
Florida is one of the biggest battleground prizes, and several large counties have flipped between the parties since 2000. But Hillsborough County is the only one in Florida that has picked all presidential winners. It gave Bush margins of 11,000 and 31,000 votes, but then swung to Obama by 10,000 and 36,000 votes. It’s a diverse county, with whites having a small majority, Hispanics 27 percent and blacks 18 percent.
Until Colorado flipped and voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, it had a tradition of favoring Republican presidential candidates that stretched almost unbroken back to the 1960s. Arapahoe County, which contains suburbs of Denver, and the state’s other large counties drove the change. After favoring George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 by as much as 15,000 votes, Obama won by margins of more than 20,000 votes in 2008 and 2012.
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