County That Most Closely Mirrors State Results?

[minionofmidas]

Snohomish is probably currently the only choice.  Grays Harbor ends up that way on the federal level, but calling it representative of the state as a whole would be stupid.

Actually, Snohomish is closer than Grays Harbor at the federal level too.

I mean that Grays Harbor tends to be representative of the statewide trends in partisan elections (see the 2004 gubernatorial election, where Snoho was more GP) and federal races, too.  I wasn't necessarily meaning that it's numerically closer federally.  But, when it comes to certain other types of races, it isn't representative at all.

That's really only a distinction that a certain kind of political nerd is going to make, though. 

What "other types of races"? Initiatives? Or human races?

[minionofmidas]

What "other types of races"? Initiatives? Or human races?

There's still significant remnants (although increasingly fewer) of when it was a Democratic union stronghold. 

Owen is from Mason County. (I actually checked a map to see whether his hometown was in the Chehalis River drainage. )

[minionofmidas]

California's bellwether is San Benito county.

By what measure? (You may very well be right, strange as it sounds at first glance.)

Four Calif. counties have gone with the state winner at all times since 1960: San Benito, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Imperial. (Of the six counties that have done so since 1988, Sacramento voted for Carter and Napa for Humphrey. Actually, Sacramento voted for Humphrey as well. And for Kennedy, too.)

San Benito also was the county most closely mirroring the state result in both 1996 and 2000. By 2004, it moved into fourth place due to Bush's above average improvement among Hispanics in the state. The 2004 top bellwether in the state is utterly bizarre.

Top 5 bellwethers, California (dem margins)
1996                      2000                      2004
state 12.89            state 11.80            state 9.95
San Benito 11.97   San Benito 12.57   Alpine 8.88
Lake 13.93             Mendocino 12.68   Lake 8.28
Napa 14.80            Imperial 10.25       Santa Barbara 7.95
Mendocino 15.87    Lake 9.65              San Benito 6.16
Monterey 16.49      Napa 14.43           Solano 15.31

Notice that Mendocino was Nader's best county in 2000 so its inclusion here is somewhat accidental.

However, that's just presidential elections. I wondered if the pattern holds downballot... so I checked the 2006 statewide races. That is, I checked them statewide and in San Benito, I didn't check if there were any better predictors.
Left column is state, right column is San Benito
24.1 D US Senator 27.2 D
16.9 R Governor 19.5 R
4.1 D   Lt. Gov.    1.0 D
10.5 D Controller 5.2 D
17.1 D Treasurer 19.3 D
18.1 D Att.Gen.    23.7 D
12.4 R Ins. Com.  11.6 R

Pretty damn good. The one turd in the punchbowl is
3.1 D Secretary of State 16.3 R
Bruce McPherson once represented the area in the State Senate though, so this explains the result to my satisfaction (well. except that I'm not sure how a Republican came to represent Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, and parts of Santa Clara in the State Senate.)

Then I went on the statewide ballot measures, and boyee, in 2006 at least, they're good at the bellwethering business in San Benito: Off by less than 2%points on average! With a maximum deviation of just 3.6points, and getting one result spot on, too.

So there it is. Despite 2004, jfern's right as usual.
A rural county with less than a fifth of California's population density and a Hispanic majority (but subaverage immigrant proportion... they've been there for a while, it would seem) is California's bellwether.