EDITORIAL: Those moving vans have red plates

WARNING: This editorial contains an excessive number of numbers. Sorry ‘bout that.

People from all over the country are piling into Idaho.

Most of them are packing bright red Rs, too.

Secretary of State Phil McGrane’s staff has compiled data from 118,702 voters who moved to and then registered in Idaho, going all the way back to 2004. 

Get a load of this:

• Only one state — Vermont — has shipped us more Democrats (51) than Republicans (50). But 61 unaffiliated Vermonters moving to Idaho comprised the biggest political chunk.

• 65% (77,136 of the 118,702 transplants) are registered Republicans

• 21% (24,906) are unaffiliated

• 12% (14,711) are Democrats

• 2% (1,949) are members of a third party

• In order, the three states that have exported the most voters to Idaho are California (39,558), Washington (20,199) and Oregon (9,178).

• California’s political pie is divided like this: Republican 75%; Democrat 10%; unaffiliated 14%; other 2%. (Yes, you read that correctly. Those aren’t California liberals moving here…)

• Washington’s pie slices this way: Republican 62%; Democrat 12%; unaffiliated 24%; other 2%

• And Oregon: Republican 65%; Democrat 14%; Unaffiliated 19%; other 1% (numbers are rounded off so might not hit 100% on the nose)

Add it all up and what have you got? At least a partial explanation why, over the past couple decades, Idaho has been shifting increasingly to the right.

It’s true that the numbers above tell us nothing about the people who are leaving Idaho. Are there more Ds than Rs saying adios to the Gem State? Can’t say.

But what we can say is that of those almost 119,000 imported voters, roughly one-third of them are not Republicans. That’s a significant and therefore scary voting bloc if, say, one dominant party didn’t want to open Idaho primaries to all voters regardless of political affiliation or non affiliation.

We can also say this: On Friday we’ll bury you under another numerical political avalanche, this time analyzing voter registration data for Kootenai County.