BOISE, Idaho — Who's moving here and where are they coming from? As the Gem State keeps growing, those are the big questions. Now, a lot of you, if social media is any indication, don't have those questions. Those posts claim the state sending the most people to Idaho is California and they're all Democrats.
Well, those posts are right- about the California part. The U.S. Census Bureau just released its annual report on the movement of people within the country, state to state. They estimate more than 80,000 people moved to Idaho last year and more than 17,000 came from California. That's more than any other state.
Again, these are estimates, but they're based on good data. The 2nd state on the list is Washington at more than 14,000. Then Oregon at more than 7,000. They’re followed by Utah and Texas... all western states and three of them share a state line with Idaho.
What about the other part of that assumption on social media... that all these Californians are bringing their democratic political beliefs from their blue state into this very red conservative state? That assumption is wrong.
This map comes from the Idaho Secretary of State's Office. Using data from registered voters last year, this shows the percentage of people from each state, with a Republican or Democratic party affiliation moving here. All the states with a majority of Republicans are in red. All the states with a majority of democrats are in blue. Literally every state, except for Vermont, sent a majority of Republicans to Idaho.
Let's take a look a closer look at those states we talked about earlier... the ones that sent the most people to Idaho. Again, California sent the most people here, and that state also has the highest percentage of Republicans moving to this state, 75%. 62% of the Washingtonians coming here are Republicans. 65% are coming from Oregon, 64% from Utah, 61% from Texas. So, yes, there are a lot of Californians moving to Idaho, and the vast majority are Republicans. The same goes for nearly every other state with people moving here.
And this shouldn't be a surprise to you, if you saw how state politics shifted since 1990. Back then, for instance, the State Senate was split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. As Idaho has grown, so has the Republican majority. They picked up two more seats this past election to increase their supermajority to 30 seats, with Democrats holding just 5.