Bellwether
[1][2] Sociologists apply the term in the active sense to a person or group of people who tend to create, influence, or set trends.
The term derives from the Middle English belle-weder, which referred to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of the lead wether (the castrated male sheep).
Tata Consultancy Services is similarly a bellwether for technology stocks in the Indian markets, BSE and NSE.
In a Westminster-style election, for example, a constituency, the control of which tends frequently to change, can have a popular vote that mirrors the result on a national scale.
An electoral bellwether can be a ward, precinct, town, county, or other district that accurately reflects how a geographic region (state, province, etc.)
[5][6] American statistician and political scientist Edward Tufte and his student Richard Sun defined electoral bellwethers (in the US) into the following categories:[6] In Australian federal elections, the Division of Robertson in New South Wales became the nation's new longest-running bellwether seat, continuously won by the party that also won government since the 1983 federal election.
Unlike many bellwethers, these are cited by analysts solely for their record and are not usually attributed to demographic factors that reflect the median of Australia.
Burlington and St. Catharines currently share the longest active streak, having elected an MP from the winning party since 1984.
In Alberta, the provincial electoral district Peace River has elected only three opposition MLAs since the province was founded in 1905.
Since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany (then West Germany) in 1949, the state where the leading party list vote (Zweitstimmen) matched the party of the subsequently chosen Chancellor the most times is Schleswig-Holstein (with two misses: 1969 and 2005), followed by the state of Lower Saxony (with misses in 1949, 1969 and 2005).
In the 2021 German federal election the SPD placed first in 12 out of 16 states, including Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony as well as federally while being led by former First Mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, the State of Hamburg borders both Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, but Scholz did not run in Hamburg during that election, instead representing the District Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II in Brandenburg (where he incidentally ran against Annalena Baerbock candidate for chancellor of Alliance 90/The Greens, drawing additional media attention to the District).
Two individual seats, Valsad and West Delhi, have successfully voted for the victorious party for the last eleven general elections in India.
Among sizeable municipalities that came within half a point of the national average in 2022 included Alingsås, Borlänge, Gävle and Karlskoga.
United Kingdom constituencies of the House of Commons all see a change at least every few decades to avoid malapportionment, apart from a few island seats.
This continues the trend that their predecessor constituencies (Livingston, Dundee West, Edinburgh East & Musselburgh, Glasgow Govan, Kilmarnock & Loudoun and Fife Central) achieved in the 1999, 2003 and 2007 elections.
[24] Due to the Electoral College system, bellwethers of sufficient size form the focus of political attention and presidential campaigns as swing states.
However, the rightward political shift of Ohio and Florida, which was modest in the 2016 and 2020 elections, accelerated greatly in 2024 with both states measuring double-digit margins toward the Republican party, more than ten points to the right of the national average.
[26] The state has more than 21 million residents, includes Belo Horizonte (the third-largest metropolitan area in Brazil) and has been birthplace of the record of nine presidents to date.
[27] Because of its varied topography, large area (larger than Metropolitan France) and significant share of national population (10.1%, second only to São Paulo), it is considered as a microcosm of Brazil's society and economics as a whole.
[28] Since the substantial role began in 1958, under the French Fifth Republic, the president has since 1965 in the final (second) round always won: diminutive Ardèche and with about double its population each, Calvados, Charente-Maritime, Indre-et-Loire and Loire.
Since the 1987 presidential election, the central, thus somewhat mountainous, province of North Chungcheong is the only one of the 17 first-tier divisions in which the most voted candidate for the presidency has consistently become the national winner.
[31] It has more than a million residents and combines much rural land with mountains and socially diverse urban communities.
