As America breathlessly awaits the results of the contentious and hotly contested 2020 Presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the race locally seems to be a given. If historical trends continue as they have in the past, Republican Presidential candidate and incumbent President Donald J. Trump should very handily carry Lycoming County.

Webb Weekly has researched how Lycoming County has voted in Presidential races going back to 1860. We have found that the Republican Presidential candidate carried this county in 29 of the 40 Presidential elections during the time period 1860 through 2008.

In the 1860 and 1864 elections, Lycoming County was very supportive of Abraham Lincoln. In 1860 Lincoln received 6,174 votes to John Breckenridge’s 3,494 votes, Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s old Illinois rival, received 2,402, and John Bell had 187.

In 1864 Lincoln received 7,608 votes to George McClellan’s 3,401 votes. Lincoln ran ahead in Lycoming County of his statewide margin, with 55.30 percent to 51.65 statewide.

In one surprising instance, in the 1912 race, Lycoming County was carried by a third-party candidate, former President Theodore Roosevelt of the Bull Moose Party. Those results showed Roosevelt garnering 5,208 votes, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who won the Presidency that year, 3,039 votes, and incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft trailing in third place in the county with 1,631 votes.

Another third-party candidate who did well, but who unlike Roosevelt, did not carry the county was H. Ross Perot, who gathered in 9,170 votes for a percentage of 21.24 percent of the vote in 1992. In the next Presidential canvass in 1996, he also did well here, capturing almost 10 percent of the vote with a smaller 3,855 votes. The next best third-party candidate who placed fairly well was Robert LaFollette in 1924, who ran on a Progressive Party ticket. He received 10.17 percent of the vote, 2,432 votes. In 1968, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace got about six percent of the Lycoming County vote.

Of the ten times a non-Republican Presidential candidate carried the county, six happened during the period from 1868 to 1896.

In recent Presidential contests, the results have been very lopsided in the Republicans’ favor. No Democratic Presidential candidate has been able to earn 40 percent or more of county votes since Jimmy Carter captured 44.28 percent of the vote in 1976, and no Democratic Presidential candidate has carried this county since Lyndon Johnson did the trick in 1964 during his landslide win over Senator Barry Goldwater that year.

In the last five Presidential elections, Hilary Clinton had 25.45 percent in 2016, Obama won 32.58 in 2012, Obama, 37.17 percent in 2008, Kerry in 2004, 31.33, Gore in 2000, 33.96. Bill Clinton in 1996, with 34.50, and for Bill Clinton in 1992, 30.84.

The worst drubbing any Democratic candidate took locally was in 1928 when Herbert Hoover crushed Al Smith 28,720 for 79.48 percent to Smith’s 7,132 or 19.74 percent.

Even the martyred John F. Kennedy took a beating in Lycoming County in 1960, gathering 18,351 votes for only 37.85 percent of the local vote.

Of the 40 Presidential elections between 1860 and 2016, Lycoming County voters voted for the eventual winner in 24 of them. It does appear that we may be a bellwether of sorts in Presidential contests, so keep your eyes on the Lycoming County results on election night and the days and perhaps weeks following it.