OPINION: Newcomers to the state are already ‘Californicating’ Idaho

All those signs seen around Idaho calling on Idaho voters to not “Californicate” Idaho — this being a prime argument against the passage of Idaho-based Proposition 1 — contain a massive irony.

Who do you think provided a lot of the winning margin against the proposition?

That’s right: almost certainly, a lot of people who have moved to Idaho from California.

I’ll direct your attention to a web page on the site of the Idaho Secretary of State’s office (a good page on a good site, by the way, that keeps on getting better) which provides detailed statistics about voters who have come from out of state and registered in Idaho. The page has specific numbers for the two decades leading up to about a year ago, so you can derive, not perfectly precise, but solid current data from it.

The top line alone is remarkable: Since 2004 (up to about a year ago), 118,639 people from all of the other states have moved to Idaho and registered to vote. In a state of about 2 million people, that’s a lot, enough to be seriously game-changing on Election Day.

On the right in Idaho, this is often presented as threatening: people coming to Idaho from a lot of liberal states, California especially but a lot of others, too, and on the verge of turning Idaho blue.

That’s not happening. California is, in fact, the largest contributor of immigrants to Idaho, but bear in mind that, while the majority there votes blue, in that big state there are still a lot of Republicans, even after the many who have left. (Just as you can still find liberal Democrats in Idaho, sometimes without even looking all that hard.)

Of all those nearly 120,000 immigrants from other states over a two-decade span, 65% have registered in Idaho as Republicans, and just 12% Democrats. There’s also the 21% who are unaffiliated, but it’s a fair guess that at least half of them, and probably more, are Republican-leaning.

By far the largest group of them came to Ada County, and it’s one of the least-partisan cohorts among the immigrant groups in the state, just 59% Republican. In contrast, the immigrants to Kootenai County, the largest recipient area in the Idaho panhandle, were 71% Republican.

There is no county in the state, and there is no home state for the newcomers, and no year since 2004, where Republicans were less than the largest segment of immigrants. Statewide, Idaho has been attracting Republicans far more than anyone else. In only two counties, Blaine and Teton (the resort counties), did Democrats even come close to matching the Republican numbers among newcomers. (Republican incomers were most overwhelming in Jefferson County, just north of Idaho Falls.)

But none of that is the most striking news the webpage holds:

This immigration pattern has been accelerating.

If you look at the last four years of immigration, the number totals 67,478 — about a fifth of the 20 years accounting for more than a third of the total number of immigrants. The percentage of Republican registrants during that time: 64%, about the same as the 20 years overall, but with larger numbers impacting the Idaho electorate.

In roughly four years previous, there were just 31,237. And in the four years before that, there were 11, 235. (Republicans accounted for 72% of that cohort.)

So this has been an element picking up steam in Idaho elections, as longtime Idahoans have formed an ever-diminishing part of the electorate, and it has increased the dominance of the Idaho Republican Party leadership, the Idaho Freedom Foundation and allied groups — and specifically the defeat of Proposition 1.

Is there specific support for that? Sure.

It’s as simple as this: Look at the Ada County elections website and check the results for Proposition 1 on the precinct map. The fastest-growing areas around Ada County and those clearly drawing the most people from out of state — including Meridian, Eagle, Kuna and Star — are also the places where the ballot issue was defeated the hardest.

Apparently Idaho already has been Californicated.

Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.