SARANAC LAKE — Washington Post data analyst Dan Keating set out on a mission after the presidential election on Nov. 5. He wanted to see which U.S. counties have voted for the winning presidential candidate in all seven elections since the year 2000.

His findings hit close to home.

There are around 3,000 counties in the United States. Of these, 2,439 were left after voting for Republican George W. Bush in 2000. Most did the same in 2004, leaving 2,372.

Then, there was a major drop. Only 272 counties voted for Democrat Barack Obama after voting for Bush two elections in a row. Fewer still voted for Obama’s second term — 129.

Republican Donald Trump’s election in 2016 came with another drop to 58. When Democrart Joe Biden was elected in 2020, the list fell into the single digits — just nine counties.

Election by election, Keating was finding fewer and fewer counties each time. Those that remained were counties which consistently switched back and forth between Republican and Democrat — always on the winning side.

Last week, Trump made history to be only the second U.S. president to win non-consecutive terms in the nation’s top office — the first since Grover Cleveland won reelection in 1892, beating Benjamin Harrison after losing to him four years earlier when Cleveland first ran for a second term. And Essex County made history to be only one of two counties left standing which have always voted for the winning presidential candidate since the turn of the millennium.

After laying out the figures, paring down the list and crunching the numbers, Keating closed his article and revealed his findings by writing “And then there were two.”

Keating’s been building the file of data he used for this report since he joined the Post in 1999. He said they use it all the time to look at electoral trends and to figure out where to send reporters for the best election-season stories.

At the end of his article, he placed a map of the U.S. with two circles around 1,600 miles apart.

“The only map you’ll ever see highlighting Blaine and Essex counties,” Keating proclaimed.

Essex County and Blaine County are referred to as “bellwether” counties — ones which consistently vote for the winning presidential candidate.

The other county was Blaine County, Montana — a rural grasslands region on the border of Canada with a population just under 7,000 compared to Essex County’s 36,775. Blaine County is around twice the size as Essex County.

These “bellwether” counties have been used in the Post’s reporting throughout the years. They are, however, usually used to compare shorter stretches of time. For example, a county’s data may be used to provide insight into voting shifts between the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, or to look at regions which vote from one party to another.

Keating said these kinds of counties are “very evenly balanced” in terms of which politica parties. Both parties stand a chance of winning them going into the election, as opposed to counties where one party’s vote total is historically so lopsided over the other. In those counties, that party is heavily favored to win from the onset, as most voters tend to vote for the same party as they did last time. Keating said this was the case for the “vast majority” of counties.

When a county is this balanced, he said it’s really a “coin-flip” over which way it will vote — “random chance.”

“To me the point of my piece is that some people have said the counties that always pick the winner have some magic that makes winning them really important,” Keating told the Enterprise. “But to me it’s just random and I hope the idea that these are some kind of magic bellwether places will go away.”

Essex County only kept its streak alive this year by around 72 votes, a slim margin that elections officials still must officially certify by the end of the month.

There were a total of 18,688 presidential votes in Essex County. Trump won by a slim margin of 9,294 votes to Harris’ 9,222, or a 49.72% and 49.35% share of the votes, respectively, according to unofficial election night totals. There were also 174 presidential write-in votes.

Keating’s article can be found at tinyurl.com/2tzkkvpa.

Now, there’s one big question looming.

Will Essex and Blaine counties maintain their perfect streak in 2028 — the next presidential election? Will they both vote for the losing candidate?

Or, will one county join the rest of the approximately 3,000 counties in the U.S., leaving the other the only one still standing?