Know Your 2024 Electoral College: Idaho (4 Electoral Votes)
Topic: Elections
IDAHO
Basic Election Facts
2024 Electoral Votes: 4
Population (2020 Census): 1,839,106 (+271,524 since 2010)
Likely Population at 2024 Election: 2,000,000
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Partisanship
Governor Party: Republican
State House Majority: Republican
State House Majority: Republican
U.S. House Delegation: 2 Republicans
U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Republicans
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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)
White: 82.1%
Latino: 12.2%
Black: 0.9%
Other: 4.8%
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Presidential History since 1932
Times Republican: 17
Last: Donald Trump, 2020, +30.8%
Times Democrat: 6
Last: Lyndon Johnson, 1964, +1.8%
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Presidential Election Characteristics
· Idaho is like neighboring Wyoming, Utah, and a handful of interior states (plus Alaska) in that it hasn’t backed a Democrat presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Its 15.5% margin in favor of George H.W. Bush is the tightest margin since then.
· Idaho has the third highest population estimate of any state for Mormon citizens, coming in at 473,894, well behind Utah and just 255,101 behind California despite the population disparity. These voters made up the backbone of the anti-populist, third-party vote in 2016 but appear to have come back to Trump in 2020 based on his vote gain and the continued expansion of the GOP voter registration advantage throughout the state.
· Democrats don’t win the state’s largest counties, and of three counties certified for Biden in 2020, none gave him a margin larger than 4,887 votes (Blaine County). The state’s largest county, Ada County, contains metro Boise, hasn’t backed a Democrat presidential nominee since 1936, and contributed 30% of all ballots in the 2020 race. Ada’s suburban counties and nearly all small and mid-sized counties throughout the state are overwhelmingly Republican.
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2020 Review
Official: Donald Trump +30.8% (267,098 votes in margin)
Keshel Revised Likely: Donald Trump +46.4% (359,589 votes in margin)
Idaho’s readjusted 2020 estimates require some precision, because Trump and Clinton combined for just 86.7% of the vote in 2016, leaving lots of third party reallotments on the table for 2020. Much of that third party vote comes from a disaffected LDS Republican vote that appears to have come back to Trump based on his record vote gain in the state in similar fashion to Utah. In moving the state to the left by 12.7%, albeit in a losing effort, in 2008, Barack Obama gained a Democrat record of 55,342 net new votes. That came with a GOP presidential vote decline that stayed around or below George W. Bush’s 2004 vote total, despite the state’s considerable population gain, through the 2016 election, before Donald Trump set the all-time vote gain record for any candidate at 145,064 net new votes in 2020. As seen in Montana, Trump was undercut by a supposed Biden Democrat record gain of 97,256, which would have easily beaten all previous record increases prior to Trump’s own. The result was a 1.0% shift to the left, which nearly cost the Republican nominee Ada County for what would have been the first loss of the state’s largest county since 1936.
My assessment afforded Biden a very slight gain over Clinton based on third party losses in 2016, even though Obama in 2012 and Clinton lost votes in consecutive elections before an all-time gain record was set by Trump, including the all-time record gain in Ada County, which the left is targeting in order to get a foothold into the state’s legislature. I doubt Idaho has ever been redder than it should have been in the 2020 election, slightly surpassing Reagan’s 1984 margin of 46.0%. The Biden bloat is evident almost everywhere, especially in Ada, its suburban neighbor Canyon, and up north in crimson red Kootenai County in the Idaho Panhandle, which was most likely choked out by cheating rings from the Spokane area across the Washington line.
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2024 Preview
Prediction: Donald Trump >+35% official, <47% clean
Idaho most resembles South Dakota or Oklahoma in my view of the 2024 election. It will almost certainly never be a Democrat state in our lifetimes, based on a read of new party registrations (now R+46.0% when it was R+38.6% in 2020, an expansion of 70,135 net GOP registration advantage) and favorable demographics, but thanks to baked-in cheating and election rigging in the big urban center, a foothold is developing. If Ada County flips this cycle against Trump, which I would consider unlikely but possible, along with down ticket offices, it will give the left some traction in the state to begin moderating it, much like what is happening in Utah with the watering down of conservative factions of the legislature.
Trump, now viewed favorably by Mormons and with a bigger share of the Latino and Native vote, will probably win Idaho in the mid-thirties, and without the cooked in cheat, by Wyoming-like numbers. Idaho will be called immediately for four more Trump electors.
If you would like to sponsor a precinct map for any of this state’s 44 counties, e-mail mapping@goefi.org.
Previous Installments
Author’s Note: Information is power. This report is free for all to view, and I believe the other Electoral College previews will be, as well. If you find this journal useful and informative, please subscribe as a paying member. My travels and mission this year will not be inexpensive, and your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you!