BOISE, Idaho — For years there have been conversations among Idahoans about the influx of out-of-state voters moving to Idaho, bringing their politics from states like California.
Newly released voter registration data from the Idaho Secretary of State's office paints a different picture.
The visualization data shows that of the nearly 119,000 current Idaho voters who moved from another state, a strong majority registered as Republicans after settling in Idaho.
California has sent the most people to Idaho over the years, with almost 40,000 current voters coming from the Golden State. Of that group, 75% signed up as Republican voters once they established residency in Idaho.
The trend holds true across the board, with 48 out of 49 states, Vermont the odd one out, contributing a majority bloc of Republican voters to Idaho. Overall, 65% of new Idaho voters from other states registered with the GOP.
"Kind of aligns with the things that we have been seeing in our survey data through Boise State now," said Dr. Jeff Lyons, lead of the Boise State political science program. "We started asking people back in 2016 or 2017 if they had moved here, where they'd come from. And then we've been able to compare that to what they sort of self-report as their party affiliation. And so we've been we've been seeing survey data that says basically this stories since then. But it's really nice to see it in a format like this where you've got this much larger numbers of people. So it kind of confirms what we thought."
While the data disputes notions of more liberal voters swarming the state, it does come with some caveats. The voter registration counts only track adults who actively registered after moving to Idaho. The numbers also don't account for people who chose not to disclose their previous out-of-state address.
Also important to point out that new residents may change party affiliation in order to participate in Idaho's closed Republican primaries, which could skew the voter registration data. Additional study is needed for a more complete picture.
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