With almost 30,000 California expatriates leading the charge, the number of Republican voters moving from other states to Idaho dwarfs the number of Democrats moving here from other states.

A new data visualization report released Wednesday morning by the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office maps the party affiliation of 118,702 current Idaho voters who moved here from other states.

The data comes from Idaho voter records, specifically a line on the Idaho voter registration form that asks voters to list the address where they were previously registered, said Gabe Osterhout, a data visualization specialist for the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office who created the report.

The map that Osterhout generated using registration data for voters who moved from other states to Idaho resembles something of a Republican fever dream – a red wave in 48 of 49 states.

Regardless of where voters are coming from and how liberal that state is, Republican voters greatly outnumber Democratic voters moving here from every state except Vermont, the data show.

On the map, Vermont is shaded gray to reflect that 60 unaffiliated voters and 51 Democrats from Vermont outnumber the 50 Republican voters who moved from Vermont to Idaho.

Everywhere else is a sea of red, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats and unaffiliated voters moving to Idaho from every state.

According to the data, among all Idaho voters who moved here from out of state:

— 77,136, or 65% are registered Republicans.

— 24,906, or 21% are unaffiliated.

— 14,711, or 12% are registered Democrats.

— 1,949, or 2% are a member of a third party, such as the Constitution Party or Libertarian Party.

Almost 30,000 Republicans have moved to Idaho from California

The data appears to confirm one myth and bust another.

First – at least among registered voters – ex-Californians are leading the surge of people moving from other states to Idaho, and it isn’t even close.

The report shows that 39,558 Idaho voters moved here from California and 29,516 of those voters, or 75%, are Republicans. That compares to only 3,940 California voters who moved here and registered as Democrats.

There are 11,047 ex-California voters registered as Republicans in Ada County alone.

The number of ex-Californians who are now registered Idaho voters is almost twice the number of registered voters that came from Washington, the state that sent the second-most voters to Idaho. The report shows that 62% of the 20,199 Washington voters who moved to Idaho are Republicans.

But that new voter registration data refutes a common myth passed around Idaho that liberals are fueling the out-of-state growth and threaten to turn Idaho blue or purple. In fact, the data shows that the percentage of Republican voters coming from other states is greater than the percentage of Republicans who already live in Idaho.

Overall, 66% of the voters moving from all other states to Idaho registered as Republicans. That compares to just 58% of Idaho voters who are registered as Republicans.

“There is a lot of misinformation floating around, especially about people coming from California and what their political views are,” Osterhout said in an interview Monday. “I went in expecting more red than blue, but I wasn’t sure how much, and I’ve been fascinated to see just how red it is.”

The voter registration data visualization map Osterhout created allows people to click around through different states on the map and find out which cities voters are coming from and which Idaho counties they are moving to. For instance, more Californians moved to Ada County than anywhere else in Idaho. The data reports that 11,047 ex-Californians moved to Ada County and registered as Republicans, versus 1,976 ex-Californians who moved to Ada County and registered as Democrats.

It’s no surprise that conservative voters from progressive states are moving to Idaho. Several real estate agents are marketing Idaho homes to conservatives living in heavily populated, progressive states like California, Washington and Oregon, the Associated Press reported in 2022.