Know Your 2024 Electoral College: Oklahoma (7 Electoral Votes)
Topic: Elections
OKLAHOMA
Basic Election Facts
2024 Electoral Votes: 7
Population (2020 Census): 3,959,353 (+207,677 since 2010)
Likely Population at 2024 Election: 4,100,000
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Partisanship
Governor Party: Republican
State House Majority: Republican
State Senate Majority: Republican
U.S. House Delegation: 5 Republicans
U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Republicans
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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)
White: 63.5%
Latino: 11.9%
Black: 7.3%
Other: 17.7%
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Presidential History since 1932
Times Republican: 17
Last: Donald Trump, 2020, +33.1%
Times Democrat: 6
Last: Lyndon Johnson, 1964, +11.5%
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Presidential Election Characteristics
· Oklahoma is joined by several other states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains regions (and Alaska) that last voted for a Democrat presidential nominee in 1964. While the state has long backed GOP presidential nominees, its party registration favored Democrats until the 2016 election. As of this writing, the GOP enjoys a party registration advantage of more than 24%, and climbing, suggesting continued increases in margin.
· No Democrat has carried a county in a presidential race in Oklahoma since Al Gore in 2000, although Oklahoma County is teetering thanks to 2020 manipulation.
· The Sooner State is one of just 5 states that moved in favor of John McCain from the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, with Barack Obama having fewer votes than Kerry in his first run, which was a national landslide. Only Oklahoma and Tulsa Counties show any signs of suburban Republican slide in a state with a massive populist bent and dependence on agriculture and America First energy policies.
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2020 Review
Official: Donald Trump +33.1% (516,390 votes in margin)
Keshel Revised Likely: Donald Trump +39.1% (583,423 votes in margin)
Oklahoma offers a textbook model to gage the 2020 results against the voter registration indicator and political trendlines. The state had been shedding its Democrat voter registration before flipping into the red column (for registrations, at R+5.9%) in 2016, with losses of over 21,000 Democrat registrations leading up to the 2008 election (from 2004), 114,000 leading up to 2012, 108,000 leading up to 2016, and 106,000 leading up to 2020, for a total decline of more than 350,000 net Democrat registrations in four cycles since the conclusion of the 2004 election. They had, accordingly, lost presidential votes in every election since then, down from 503,966 for Kerry to 420,375 for Clinton in four elections, and with Trump’s gains in Oklahoma (71,144 net) being the largest gain since Bush’s push in 2004, were doomed - party registration advantage had moved from R+5.9% to R+16.8%, with Trump’s 36.4% 2016 margin destined to push higher - but Biden gained 83,515 net new votes (more than Trump!). Most of the damage appears to have come from Oklahoma, Tulsa, and Cleveland Counties, the latter of which is home to the University of Oklahoma and a likely ballot harvesting hub according to my analysis.
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2024 Preview
Prediction: Donald Trump >+36% official, >+40% clean
Oklahoma is already another 7.5% more Republican by registration than it was in the 2020 election, with Republicans sitting on a lead of 565,342 net registrations, up from 379,102 four years ago. Realistically, Democrats should be struggling to come up with 400,000 votes statewide, and Trump is doing better with Latinos than ever before, and improving with Native Americans, which make up much of the sizeable “other” ethnic demographic in the data above. I expect Trump to clear 1.1 million votes and cruise on his platform of America First energy policy and the battle against wokeism but am not sure if election manipulation will make him the first GOP candidate to drop a county since 2000. Oklahoma County is hanging on by a thread thanks to some organic suburban GOP decline (1.1% win for Trump in 2020), but also likely election engineering and corruption of the mail-balloting system. It would be the first, and only, county to fall if trends continue.
Oklahoma will be a laugher and will push toward 40 points in favor of Trump.
If you would like to sponsor a precinct map for any of this state’s 77 counties, e-mail mapping@goefi.org.
Previous Installments
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