Guam Has Correctly Predicted the Outcome of Every U.S. Presidential Election Since 1980
And it just voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.
Guam has correctly predicted the outcome of every U.S. presidential election since 1980. And it just voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Guam has correctly predicted the outcome of every U.S. presidential election since 1980. And it just voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The tiny U.S. territory’s presidential vote doesn’t count, so it conducts its presidential “vote” through a straw poll. Though its voters are U.S. citizens, Guam has no electoral votes (see HBO’s John Oliver explain all that here). But it has been an bellwether of sorts: In every vote since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 — with the exception of 1996, when a typhoon delayed Guam’s voting and voters had already chosen Bill Clinton — the Pacific island territory has sided with the eventual winner.
With all 67 precincts reporting, Clinton secured 71.63 percent of Guam’s vote, Pacific Daily News reported. Republican candidate Donald Trump followed with 24.16 percent of the vote, with socialist candidate Emidio Soltysik capturing 4.22 percent. Despite the unprecedented nature of the 2016 election cycle, this isn’t significantly different than the outcome in 2012, when Guam voted 72.4 percent for Barack Obama versus 26.5 percent for GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
The Guam Election Commission reported it had 51,713 registered voters. Guam’s vote does count during the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries, when it went for Trump and Clinton respectively.
Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Robbie Gramer was a staff writer at Foreign Policy from 2016-2024. X: @robbiegramer
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