The remote county that has picked winning presidents for 100 years — and why it could swing to Trump

In Clallam County, the Republican’s name is guaranteed to arouse strong opinions — and the sense that many will vote for him

A quivering, bloody carcass turns up loose in the back of a Dodge Ram pickup truck, and Kacee Garner gets to work.
It is the height of the hunting season, and the men at Sunrise Meats in Port Angeles sweat for 12 hours a day. Four or more animals can be deposited at their door each hour.
First, 31-year-old Garner pushes a hook into the flesh of the latest unfortunate beast — a deer — taking care to select a strong muscle that can withstand some force. Then, three men haul it by rope onto an overhead rail that runs from the forecourt into the shop.
Inside, where flies circle and the smell of blood fills the air, there are already two deer, three elk and a black bear hanging upside-down waiting to be butchered.
As Garner and his colleague plough through the skilled, but mundane work, conversation flows on a range of topics — including who will become the next president of the United States.
“I definitely don’t like Trump,” he says. “He’s about as horrific as they come. I don’t agree with the way he acts as a human…I’m terrified to have him be president again.”
The others agree. “When he was elected, I lost a lot of faith in the voting public,” says Dane Dau, who plans to vote for Kamala Harris on Nov 5.
“I didn’t even begin to take it seriously. There was no way in hell any sane person could vote for this lunatic.”
It turns out that those voters are their clients. 
“The farmers and hunters that are coming here to do business, they typically tend to the Right,” Dau adds.
Like many Americans, the butchers like to talk politics. But only their home, Clallam County, has such a remarkable knack of picking the winner.
In the last 100 years, this remote corner of Washington state has voted for successful candidates in all but two races, including the last 11 consecutive elections.
None of the US’s other 3,243 counties have come close to matching its record. In a country of swing districts and bellwether towns, Clallam is king.
Sequestered at the US’s most northwesterly point, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Canada, Clallam County is largely rural, relying heavily on revenue from its logging industry and the spending of tourists, who come to visit the towering mountains of the Olympic National Park.
There is only one main highway, a northern section of Route 101, which snakes its way from the conservative, coastal edge of the county to the liberal cities of Port Angeles and Sequim – home to hundreds of wealthy Californians who have migrated north for a quiet retirement.
Last week, The Telegraph polled 1,400 people there, and in the 24 other bellwether counties in the US that have voted for presidential winners in every election since 2008.
The results, collected by the polling firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies, show how close the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has become.
Trump, who is the frontrunner in the national polls and betting markets, is ahead by a whisker on 47 per cent of the vote.
Ms Harris is behind by one point, on 46 per cent, with third party candidates collectively securing the support of three per cent of the survey’s respondents. A further four per cent said they had not yet decided who to support.
The counties surveyed are not all politically significant. Many, like Clallum, are in safe states for either party and will have no impact on the overall result.
Others, like Erie and Northampton counties in Pennsylvania, have been swamped by campaigners for months because their voters could swing the election for either candidate.
While Trump supporters would have you think that their man is easily winning the country back in swing counties, the vote between the former president and Ms Harris is still evenly split.
On the other hand, when voters were asked who they thought they neighbours would choose, 51 per cent said they thought they would opt for Trump, compared with  44 per cent who said they would support Ms Harris.
In Clallam County, the local Republican Party office in Port Angeles is painted with stars and stripes. A beaming image of Trump and his wife, Melania, looks out at passers-by from its window.
Inside, visitors can buy a selection of campaign merchandise, including rocks bearing Trump’s name – painted by a local women’s group — and a red cap with the slogan: “Make brisket $1.97/lb again.”
“I think it is shifting back,” says Pam Blakeman, the county’s GOP chairman. “We were definitely swinging Democrat, but I think people are switching back because they’re fed up.
“Voters here find Trump annoying in plenty of ways, but they like his policies. They feel like America was safer during his first term, and they were financially better off.
“There’s a lot of people who are not part of the fan club, but they are going to vote for him.”
Angie Stanton, a 50-year-old dialysis nurse, is one of those voters.
“He’s a complete f—ing asshole,” she says. “But he’s not a politician. And that’s what this country needs. We need somebody to rip us out of the f—ing gutter.”
Stanton lives in Forks, a tiny logging town in the west of the county that shot to international fame in 2005 as the misty, supernatural setting of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels.
Occasionally, tourists still pass through to take photographs of a house that served as Meyer’s inspiration, which is decorated with faded cardboard cut-outs of characters from the film adaptations of her books.
“It was okay,” reads the Google review of the house by one equivocal fan, who gave it three stars out of five.
Sherry Schaaf, a retired science teacher who lives next door, is even less enthusiastic. “It’s very annoying,” she says.
Residents of Forks are also used to the arrival of reporters at their doors every four years, trying to discern the identity of the next president in the country’s most prophetic battleground.
Annika Barragan, a 31-year-old HR consultant in the state’s Department of Natural Resources, is not hiding her preference. She has decorated her house in Forks with eight years’ worth of yard signs from Trump’s three presidential campaigns.
After one of them was torn down by some local teenagers this year, she replaced it and attached a tripwire connected to a blank 12 gauge shotgun shell.
“When you walk past it, it blows up and scares the crap out of people,” she laughs.
“I’m sick and tired with people messing with my s—. If you don’t like the guy, that’s fine. But I do, so just leave me alone.”
Like many voters, Barragan is concerned about the state of the US economy, which has been hit by inflation driven by higher energy prices in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Price rises are especially dangerous for sitting presidents, because their effect is felt immediately by almost all voters. Inflation peaked at 9.1 per cent in June 2022, baking in higher food and gas prices that have not been matched by wage increases for most workers.
“Obviously, times are a hell of a lot harder right now than they were when Trump was in office,” says Barragan. “It’s a lot harder to afford things. Everything just kind of went through the roof after he left.”
The Telegraph’s survey found that the economy was the most important election issue for 36 per cent of voters in the nation’s swing counties, ahead of abortion and immigration. 
Half of voters say they are worse off than at the last election, and many lay blame at the feet of Joe Biden.
Asked to rank the causes of the high cost of living, Mr Biden’s policies were the top choice among the survey’s respondents, ahead of corporate price gouging and the pandemic.
Giancarlo Buonpane, a retired timber worker who moved to the US from Italy as a child, links problems with the economy to record levels of illegal migration under the Biden administration.
“I came from Italy when I was 13, but you’ve got to come the right way,” he says. “If they get jobs here, they’re going to work cheaper. Democrats like illegal immigrants because they keep the prices down. They can hire them in factories, whatever.”
At the local farmers’ market in Port Angeles, where stallholders are surrounded by organic produce, handmade greetings cards and jewellery, everyone says they plan to vote for Ms Harris.
The only outliers are the Gaza protesters outside the market’s covered awning, who are collaring anyone who passes by to talk about Israel. The driver of a passing car shouts abuse at them.
Voters at the market describe the grim reality of living in one of America’s swing counties, where friends and families have been ripped apart by politics.
Tammy Ratliff, a farmer, says she stopped speaking to a friend who began using a racist term about Chinese people after Trump was first elected.
“In this county, once Trump cut into the picture, it really created a huge divide,” she says. “I don’t spend much time with her because it’s brought out biases about other races and things.”
Ratliff says she does not have a strong preference for the Democrats, and considers herself a swing voter.
“I don’t vote on party, I vote on issues,” she says. After a pause, she adds: “And I vote against anybody that I think is clearly insane.”
Her experience of political division with family and friends is common. Almost a quarter of survey respondents in swing counties said their loved ones did not know which way they would vote.
Gail Alison, another stallholder, says she had been forced to find a new place to buy horses because her local rescue centre stopped selling to liberals.
“A lot of farmers are more conservative, and we worked together, and we were friendly,” she says.
“But in 2016, things changed, and things really cooled up. I have neighbours who are Trump supporters – some of my best friends – and we just do not speak about it.”
Days before the country heads to vote, the likely winner of this year’s presidential election remains a topic of hot debate.
But in the 25 counties that have predicted the last four results, Trump has seen an increase in support that looks promising for his campaign to return to the White House next year.
Clallam County – home to liberal farmers, conservative loggers and Sunrise Meats – is as good a barometer as any.