Posts published in July 2025

For some years, I've helped out in a peripheral way with the editing of Idaho and Oregon sections the Almanac of American Politics, the top single-volume reference book on that subject. A few months before publication, they send some of the text from the upcoming edition, and I post it here. Here's one of four sections from the book. Enjoy. - rs

For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. In September, the Almanac will be publishing its 2026 edition, with more than 2,000 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more.

Below are excerpts from the new chapters in the 2026 Almanac on the state of Idaho / Oregon and Gov. Brad Little / Tina Kotek, written by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson — a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, a senior columnist for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and a contributor of political coverage for U.S. News & World Report — has written for eight editions of the Almanac since 2000. For the 2026 edition, he served as chief author.

Readers can receive a 15% discount if they purchase the new Almanac at its website and use the code Ridenbaugh2026 at checkout.

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Oregon is a blue state, even though its rural areas are as Republican as other portions of the American West. That's because almost half of the state's population—47 percent—lives in the counties in and around Portland.

Oregon has popularized bike trails, light-rail trams, plug-in stations for electric cars, handcrafted ales, and small-batch distilleries. It sells Pendleton shirts and Nike sneakers to the world. Yet you can still see much of the same Oregon that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw in 1805, when they came down the Columbia River gorge, past the Willamette River to the Pacific Ocean. A few years later, in 1811, John Jacob Astor set up his fur trading post at Astoria. But few Americans came overland until the 1840s, when New England Yankees and Missouri farmers drove wagons along the Oregon Trail and floated down the Columbia to the Willamette Valley. In this remote spot, nearly 2,000 miles from the Mississippi River frontier and 700 miles from the small Mexican settlements in California, they built an orderly, productive society—a kind of western New England. It grew steadily, with a few booms: in the early 1900s, from timber harvesting; during World War II, when Kaiser built ships in Portland Oregon and Vancouver Washington; and in the 1970s, when Americans began to appreciate Oregon's natural environment.

Oregon also has a dark strain of history. When the state's constitution was written, it included a provision barring the relocation of any Black person to the state, and another that precluded Black ownership of real estate. The Klan had a significant presence in the state in the early 20th century, and communities of skinheads flourished in the 1980s. It took until 1959 for Oregon to ratify the post-Civil War 15th Amendment, which guaranteed Blacks the right to vote. During the winter of 2016, a breakaway group of armed protesters occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the state's rural, southeastern corner, decrying federal encroachment on private lands and prompting a 41-day standoff that led to one death and more than a dozen guilty pleas for conspiracy and trespassing. In 2017, a man screamed anti-Muslim insults on a commuter train and proceeded to stab two men to death and injure a third.

Although the image of "kombucha-swilling, artisan knot-loving, bicycle-riding haven" (as the Oregonian newspaper once put it) is based in reality—and was lovingly satirized by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in IFC television's "Portlandia"—the city has more recently been known for violent clashes between far-right groups and far-left "antifa," or antifascists. In 2020, after the death of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of police, Portland became a hub of street protests, even though it is the nation's whitest city with a population of at least 500,000. The clashes' reality was often more complicated than the popular image. The biggest protests were peaceful and diverse, but others included anarchists with even more radical aims than Black Lives Matter protesters; they battled with police and sometimes with right-wing groups, setting fires and vandalizing the federal courthouse and police headquarters. President Donald Trump seized on the conflict, sending federal agents into Portland to protect federal property, but without the support of local officials, and sometimes without identifying insignias. Then-Gov. Kate Brown, who initially tolerated the "occupation" of large swaths of the city, later called it "political theater" and a "blatant abuse of power." Eventually, Brown and Vice President Mike Pence brokered an agreement for the federal forces to leave; although some clashes continued, the unrest ratcheted down.

Oregon grew much faster than the national average in the 1940s, when war industries brought thousands of people to the West Coast, and again in the 1970s, when the pleasant environment attracted so many people that containing growth became a dominant local issue. "Come and visit us again and again," Republican Gov. Tom McCall told outsiders. "But for heaven's sake don't come here to live." At his prodding, the legislature in 1973 passed a law that limited development, and in the 1990s, metropolitan Portland sharply restricted growth and sprawl. These measures were also popular in the university towns of Eugene and Corvallis and to a lesser extent in the suburbs. But clamping down on development brought higher housing costs, and the state is still struggling to find the right mix. In 2019, Brown signed the nation's first statewide rent control law and a separate measure requiring cities of at least 10,000 residents to permit duplexes in areas of single-family homes, and even quadruplexes in the Portland area.

Amid tighter federal and state regulation and greater automation, Oregon has lost 40 percent of its forestry jobs since 2001 and one-third of its mill jobs. The state has also grappled with a downside of its verdant surroundings: wildfires. In 2020, Oregon had more than 1,400 square miles burned in just three days, double the usual amount for a whole year. The following year, the Bootleg Fire scorched an area bigger than New York City, making it the third-largest fire in Oregon since 1900. In 2024, the Durkee Fire scorched more than 450 square miles. Meanwhile, in 2024, workers finished demolishing four hydropower dams along a 240-mile stretch of the Klamath River, hoping to revive the river's salmon, which will provide nearby Native Americans with their traditional sustenance.

The growth of high-tech companies around Portland, driven by Intel, prompted the nickname Silicon Forest, though the chipmaker has struggled in the age of artificial intelligence. Oregon is a top exporter; computer and electronic products are the biggest, totaling about $9 billion annually. Befitting Oregon's location on the Pacific Rim, the state's top trading partners outside of North America are China and Malaysia. The port of Portland ships motor vehicles and agricultural commodities, though its money-losing container operation avoided closure in 2024 only after the state stepped in with funding. Oregon ranks high in science, technology, engineering and math workers and in inflows of college graduates. In 2023, Oregon scrapped its prohibition—on the books since 1951—on drivers pumping their own gasoline, leaving New Jersey as the nation's last holdout.

Oregon's population has risen by 11.5 percent since 2010, enough to secure an additional House seat after the 2020 Census, but it has stagnated this decade, particularly in the city of Portland, where population fell by 22,000 from 2000 to 2023. The three biggest counties in the Portland metro area—Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas—also shrank during that period. Growth has been stronger in Deschutes County—a 32 percent increase since 2010, driven by a boom in Bend, a onetime blue-collar locale that has recently become a destination for scenic tourism and families looking to move into pleasant surroundings. (Bend is also home to the planet's only remaining Blockbuster Video store.) Oregon's rural population is a rapidly diminishing proportion of the state, heightening its resentment toward more liberal metro Portland; voters in 13 eastern Oregon counties have backed joining a conservative "greater Idaho," which would require approval from both states and Congress. Oregon's population is 2.4 percent Black, almost 15 percent Hispanic and a little more than 5 percent Asian. Washington County in suburban Portland is increasingly diverse—13 percent Asian and 19 percent Hispanic. Marion County (Salem) and the farming counties east of the Cascades also have relatively high Hispanic percentages.

Though Oregon was largely founded by missionaries, the religiously unaffiliated form the core constituency for some of the state's policy innovations over the last two generations. Oregon legalized most abortions prior to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, and it decriminalized medical marijuana and legalized assisted suicide in referendums in 1994 and 1997. In 2007, the Democratic-controlled Legislature banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and mandated recycling of discarded electronics. It has also imposed strict limits on smoking. In 2022, the state became the first in the nation to enable children to be kept continuously on Medicaid through age 6. Meanwhile, the state has some of the oldest sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants, and in 2018, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have overturned those protections. Oregon was also among the most active states in filing lawsuits opposing the Trump administration's immigration policies.

However, Oregonians are starting to rein in their tolerance on some issues. With its high housing costs, Oregon has the third highest rate of homelessness of any state, and the highest rate of homelessness for unaccompanied youth. In 2024, the city of Grants Pass won a case at the U.S. Supreme Court that allows jurisdictions to ban people sleeping outdoors; in the 6-3 ruling, the justices said such laws do not violate the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Oregon has also backtracked on drug policy. Voters approved legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, but in recent years, supply has outpaced demand, straining programs that rely on marijuana tax revenue. In rural portions of southwestern Oregon near the California border, illicit marijuana growth has led to lawlessness, some linked to foreign cartels. Then, in 2020, voters approved the regulated medical use of psilocybin, a hallucinogen sometimes called "magic mushrooms." It passed by double-digit margins. However, after the state experienced persistent rates of addiction and overdoses, the Legislature in 2024 repealed most of the experiment in drug decriminalization, which 58 percent of voters had supported in 2020. Now, the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs, including heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine, is again a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

Oregon was the second state after South Dakota to give voters direct decision-making via ballot measures. Oregon pioneered the election of senators by popular vote and, with Michigan in 1908, the recall of elected officials. It was the first to adopt all-mail elections; as a result, there really is no Election Day in Oregon. Voting has tended to produce strong margins for progressive candidates and positions in Portland and the university towns of Eugene and Corvallis and huge conservative margins in counties east of the Cascades and in much of southwestern Oregon, where discontent over timber policy has lingered. Although moderates dominated the state Republican Party through the 1990s, the party's remnants have shifted too far to the right to be competitive statewide. In March 2022, state Sen. Dallas Heard stepped down as state GOP chair, saying, "My physical and spiritual health can no longer survive exposure to the toxicity that can be found in this community."

Oregon has not been a presidential battleground in recent elections; it voted for Hillary Clinton by 11 points in 2016, Joe Biden by 16 in 2020, and Kamala Harris by 14 in 2024. A Republican has not won a gubernatorial race since 1982. In early 2019, the only Republican to win statewide in years, Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, died of brain cancer; in 2020, a Democrat won the office. In 2022, voters approved a landmark gun control ballot measure, though only by about a percentage point. The law requires a permit and safety training to buy a firearm and would prohibit magazines larger than 10 rounds; it was challenged in the courts, but in March 2025, the state's second-highest court gave its approval.

In 2024, Democrats won every statewide office on the ballot and flipped the House seat held by Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer. (Chavez-DeRemer was later appointed Labor Secretary by Trump.) Democrats also gained a seat in each legislative chamber, reaching the 60 percent majority required for revenue-raising measures without Republican support. However, voters made heterodox choices in ballot measures; they rejected ranked-choice voting and a proposal to raise taxes on corporations and distribute the proceeds to residents, but they greenlighted collective bargaining for cannabis workers.

For some years, I've helped out in a peripheral way with the editing of Idaho and Oregon sections the Almanac of American Politics, the top single-volume reference book on that subject. A few months before publication, they send some of the text from the upcoming edition, and I post it here. Here's one of four sections from the book. Enjoy. - rs

For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. In September, the Almanac will be publishing its 2026 edition, with more than 2,000 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more.

Below are excerpts from the new chapters in the 2026 Almanac on the state of Idaho / Oregon and Gov. Brad Little / Tina Kotek, written by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson — a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, a senior columnist for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and a contributor of political coverage for U.S. News & World Report — has written for eight editions of the Almanac since 2000. For the 2026 edition, he served as chief author.

Readers can receive a 15% discount if they purchase the new Almanac at its website and use the code Ridenbaugh2026 at checkout.

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After winning a hotly contested primary in 2022 as a pragmatic Republican, Brad Little signed a raft of conservative legislation during his second term.

Little is a third-generation Idahoan whose grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1894 and became "Idaho's Sheep King," establishing an operation that spanned much of southwest Idaho. His son carried on the business, and his grandson worked on the ranch while growing up and after graduating from the University of Idaho in 1977. Little served as president of the Idaho Wool Growers Association, chaired two committees of the American Sheep Industry Association, and chaired the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. But the family sold the sheep operation and entered the cattle business. They also opened some of their land as an off-road vehicle park.

The family's second business was politics. Little's father served in the state Legislature and was a Republican National Committee member; as a youngster, Little helped his father campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Four years later, he sat next to Ronald Reagan at the Republican National Convention. In 1972, Little became a delegate. In 2001, GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne appointed Little to a vacant state Senate seat, and he proceeded to win election four times. Then, in 2009, Little was appointed to the vacant lieutenant governorship and won the seat on his own in 2010 and 2014. When three-term Republican Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said he wouldn't run again, Little jumped in and received Otter's endorsement.

Little was the establishment favorite, focusing on traditional Republican priorities such as low taxes and limited spending, but he faced two other major candidates in the free-spending, attack-ad-saturated 2018 primary: Rep. Raúl Labrador, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, and Tommy Ahlquist, a developer running as an outsider. Little got 38 percent, followed by Labrador with 33 percent and Ahlquist with 27 percent. In the Democratic primary, Paulette Jordan, a progressive former state House member and former Coeur d'Alene Tribal Council official, upset establishment favorite A.J. Balukoff. Little, running a largely orthodox Republican campaign, siphoned some moderate Democratic voters away from Jordan and won, 60%-38%.

In his first year in office, Little expressed discomfort with some of the provisions of legislation to implement Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, including a work requirement, but he ultimately signed them into law. Little signed a bill expanding concealed carry to 18- to 20-year-olds in cities. Liberals liked Little's renewal of the state's commitment to accept refugees, acknowledgement that climate change needed addressing, and enactment of higher starting pay for teachers. But Little ignored opposition from major Idaho employers—including Chobani, Clif Bar, Hewlett-Packard and Micron—when he signed one bill that would ban transgender girls and women from the state's female sports teams, and another that would effectively prevent residents from changing their gender on birth certificates. Within months, a federal court voided the birth certificate bill.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Little restricted public gatherings, which put him on a collision course with the most conservative Idahoans, including Ammon Bundy, who had once taken over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon for 41 days, and Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. In May 2021, McGeachin claimed her own authority to reshape policy when Little was out of state, issuing an executive order that banned mask mandates. Little rescinded the order on his return, but McGeachin tried again in October with orders barring mandatory vaccination and coronavirus testing. He rescinded these, too. Such efforts fed a primary challenge by McGeachin that received Donald Trump's support in November 2021.

As Little looked ahead to his reelection, his agenda was plenty conservative. He signed the state's largest-ever tax cut, plus an abortion ban and a "trigger" law, in the event that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade; it took effect when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision in the summer of 2022. Little also signed a bill allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, and he vetoed a measure that would have banned businesses from requiring coronavirus vaccines, citing "government overreach into the private sector." The Legislature failed to override his veto.

The primary drew national attention. McGeachin mingled with members of the Three Percenter militia, but Little easily topped her in fundraising, and not even the Idaho GOP primary electorate was prepared to choose her vision over Little's pragmatic conservatism. He won almost 53 percent, well ahead of McGeachin's 32 percent and smaller totals from a few other candidates. In the three-way general election, Little took almost 61 percent to 20 percent for Democrat Stephen Heidt and 17 percent for Bundy, who was running as an independent. After losing four counties in his 2018 run, Little lost only one in 2022—Blaine County (Sun Valley), which accounted for less than 2 percent of the statewide vote.

After his reelection, Little faced a stream of conservative bills and mostly protected his right flank by signing them. He signed one bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and one that required transgender students to use bathrooms of their sex assigned at birth; a measure that banned minors from traveling out of state for abortions without parental consent. Little also signed legislation permitting the execution of death row inmates by firing squad; and, in a shift, an end to workplace coronavirus vaccination requirements. Little signed bills to ban ranked-choice voting in the state and to remove school identification from the list of verifications allowed for voting. He signed legislation limiting schools' use of restraint and seclusion for discipline, responding to an investigation by the Idaho Statesman newspaper. The Legislature overrode Little's veto of a bipartisan property tax bill.

In 2024, Little delivered on a promise by signing a bill to invest $1.5 billion in new funding and $500 million in redirected funding to upgrade aging school facilities. More contentiously, he signed a bill similar to one he had previously vetoed that allowed parental lawsuits against libraries over material deemed harmful to minors, and he signed legislation prohibiting minors from undergoing rape kit exams without parental consent, which critics said would shield perpetrators of incest. Little signed a bill Democrats had long sought to require insurance companies to provide six months' worth of contraceptives at a time. Idaho also dealt with two notable U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2024. One lifted a lower-court ban on the state's law ending gender-affirming care for minors; the other required that Idaho hospitals provide abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, at least for now.

In February 2025, Little signed a measure to enact a $50 million program to spend state funds on private school tuition, and the following month he signed a bill that banned school and government mask mandates to fight infectious diseases. He also signed first-in-the-nation legislation to make firing squads the primary method of carrying out the death penalty. In March 2025, he signed a bill calling for work requirements for Medicaid while allowing Medicaid recipients to access certain tax credits; he also signed legislation to deregulate child care centers amid a shortage of child care options. In April 2025, he signed legislation barring immigrants without legal status from receiving public assistance.

Little could run again in 2026, though Labrador, now attorney general, could pose a strong Republican challenge if he also runs.

For some years, I've helped out in a peripheral way with the editing of Idaho and Oregon sections the Almanac of American Politics, the top single-volume reference book on that subject. A few months before publication, they send some of the text from the upcoming edition, and I post it here. Here's one of four sections from the book. Enjoy. - rs

For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. In September, the Almanac will be publishing its 2026 edition, with more than 2,000 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more.

Below are excerpts from the new chapters in the 2026 Almanac on the state of Idaho / Oregon and Gov. Brad Little / Tina Kotek, written by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson — a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, a senior columnist for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and a contributor of political coverage for U.S. News & World Report — has written for eight editions of the Almanac since 2000. For the 2026 edition, he served as chief author.

Readers can receive a 15% discount if they purchase the new Almanac at its website and use the code Ridenbaugh2026 at checkout.

---

The population of Idaho—tucked near the continental United States' northwest edge, far from any major metro area—has nearly doubled since 1990. But the migration of newcomers to both livable Boise and resort areas such as Sun Valley hasn't added many Democrats: Idaho has remained solidly Republican for more than a half-century, although the GOP is increasingly divided between an establishment wing and the far right.

Idaho was the last North American area on which European fur traders set eyes. Then in the 1840s, New England Yankees, led by ministers, made their way west on the Oregon Trail through southern Idaho. The state's northern panhandle, an extension of Washington's Columbia River Valley, saw its first white settlement when miners came seeking gold and silver; white loggers seeking timber followed. Mormons moving north from Utah settled in the state's eastern part, while Basque immigrants and their descendants significantly influenced Idaho and its politics. Federal water reclamation projects first authorized in 1894 attracted the most settlers, producing inexpensive hydroelectric power. Today, Idaho ranks fifth in the U.S. for percentage of energy generation that is renewable Idaho Power has said it will use fully clean sources of energy by 2045, thanks partly to its 17 Snake River hydroelectric plants. Wind power accounts for about 16 percent of the state's electricity generation, though several counties have moved to limit or ban on solar and wind energy production, and on his first day of his second term, Donald Trump moved to temporarily block a large-scale wind farm, the Lava Ridge Wind Project. Meanwhile, the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls expects to deploy its first portable nuclear microreactor by 2026, with the aim of replacing diesel power for isolated communities.

Cheap water power transformed the barren Snake River Valley into some of the nation's best volcanic, soil-enriched farmland, which along with warm days and cool nights proved ideal for the Burbank russet potato. In 1953, an eighth-grade dropout named J.R. Simplot perfected the process of freezing french fries; with a handshake, he sealed a contract with a little restaurant chain called McDonald's and was on his way to becoming the world's biggest potato processor. Today, Idaho ranks sixth in the nation for the percentage of state gross domestic product coming from agriculture, and since 1997, agricultural GDP has expanded by 2.9 times in Idaho, compared with 2.5 times for the nation as a whole. Idaho ranks first nationally in potatoes and barley, third in sugar beets and second in hops, the latter contributing to a thriving microbrewery industry. Idaho also ranks No. 4 in dairy sales; the state's dairy receipts are now 2.6 times as large as that for potatoes. Chobani has a large yogurt plant in Twin Falls that has been a major driver of economic growth in south central Idaho.

The state is big: The town of Montpelier in the southeast is closer to Farmington, New Mexico, than to Bonners Ferry in the northern panhandle. And the wilderness is never far away. Towering over the state Capitol in Boise is the vast peak of Shafer Butte. Not far away are the sharp peaks and broad valleys of the Sawtooth range; the impassable mountains of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the largest U.S. wilderness area outside Alaska; and the 425 miles of the Salmon River. Having so much wilderness comes with a downside; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 1 percent of the land in Idaho on average has burned annually since 1984, a pattern that is projected to worsen in the coming years because of climate change. Wildfires have contributed to poor air quality. Three Idaho areas—Boise, plus the regions in Idaho adjoining Logan Utah, and Spokane Washington—rank in the American Lung Association's list of top 25 nationally for short-term particle pollution.

In recent years, Idaho has been at or near the top of state rankings for patents per capita, a tradition that reaches back into the early years of the 20th century, when a Mormon farm boy from Rigby named Philo T. Farnsworth came up with many of the concepts that laid the basis for the invention of television. In the 1970s, potato magnate Simplot traded one type of chip for another, becoming the primary financier of a startup called Micron Technology, which, along with Hewlett-Packard, spawned a booming high-tech sector. Micron is undergoing a $15 billion expansion of its campus southeast of Boise to build new chip manufacturing capacity, bolstered by $6.14 billion in federal CHIPS and Science Act funding. Nearby, Meta is building an $800 million data center. Not to be left out, food processor Lamb Weston is expanding a plant in American Falls that can produce more than 1.1 million pounds of french fries per day. Compared with the eve of the pandemic, average wages in Idaho have risen by 36 percent, well above the national rate of 23 percent, and although wages are lower in Idaho, so is the cost of living. The state's construction boom has prompted some worry about the availability of construction labor, particularly if Trump fulfills his promise to deport illegal immigrants en masse. The dairy industry has expressed concern about that prospect, too. Meanwhile, another tech company, Intuit, said that it was closing a campus near Boise, cutting 1,800 workers.

The combination of technology jobs and natural beauty has driven the state's population growth. Idaho led the country in the percentage of population growth from 2017 through 2021, and is still in the top five. If rapid growth continues, Idaho could gain a third House seat after the 2030 Census—the first time in its history. Today, 42 percent of Idahoans live in the Treasure Valley around Boise; population in Ada County, which includes Boise, has grown by 34 percent since 2010, fueled by such amenities as the 200-mile-long Ridge to Rivers trail system. Between 2020 and 2021, three suburbs of Boise—Meridian, Caldwell, and Nampa—ranked among the country's top 15 fastest-growing cities or towns. Other areas have grown, too, especially those attracting a wealthy clientele. Blaine County, which includes the resort of Sun Valley, has grown by 17 percent since 2010, and Teton County, a bedroom community for pricey Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has grown by 23 percent over the same period. In fast-growing areas, traffic and high housing prices have followed the brewpubs and farm-to-table restaurants. But most of Idaho's counties have seen little population change in the past half-century.

Hispanic residents account for 14 percent of the state's population, and Idaho has welcomed not only Americans from other states but also people from abroad, including refugees. The state has absorbed more than 20,000 refugees since the 1970s, mostly in Boise and Twin Falls—first Vietnamese and Cambodians, then Bosnians, and more recently refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, Nepal and Iran. The Mormon population, concentrated in the state's south, may be a reason for its tolerant streak, given its international missionary outreach: Idaho has the second highest percentage of Mormons of any state.

In its early years as a silver-producing state, Idaho backed populism and opposed the gold standard; from statehood up to 1990, the state cycled between periods of Republican dominance and partisan competitiveness. But since 1990, Idaho has become staunchly Republican. The U.S. government owns 63 percent of Idaho's land, and many Idahoans strongly oppose federal policies that limit road building and grazing on public lands, and they don't like the idea of breaching Snake River dams to protect salmon (in the process, depriving potato farmers of water). Since 1964, no Democratic presidential nominee has won more than 37 percent of the vote. Idaho has elected only Republicans to the governorship since 1994 and to the Senate since 1978. With one exception in 2008, the GOP has won every election for Idaho's two House seats since 1994.

Boise has become solidly blue: Its state legislators are all Democratic and they tend to win in landslides. But step a mile outside city limits and the political tenor changes. Influxes of upscale professionals and minorities have been balanced by the migration of retirees, as well as more conservative engineers and entrepreneurs who have come from California and other states for a fresh environment and a fresh start—and fewer regulations. Meanwhile, the northern panhandle has a history as a hotbed for extremist activity. In the 1970s, the white supremacist Aryan Nations was based around Coeur d'Alene, northern Idaho's largest population center; it was eventually forced out. The Ruby Ridge standoff between U.S. Marshals and a far-right family played out a bit further north in 1992, and 31 white nationalists affiliated with the Patriot Front were arrested in 2022 on charges of conspiracy to riot at a Coeur d'Alene LGBTQ+ pride event in 2022. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated fault lines in the state, as a vocal segment of rural conservatives rebelled against public health restrictions imposed by the more pragmatic Republican governor, Brad Little. The party's right wing has an ideological enforcer, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and has sometimes made common cause with the John Birch Society, which won a unanimous endorsement from the Republican central committee of Kootenai County (Coeur d'Alene). Some activists mounted armed protests at local officials' offices and homes. The GOP's internal divisions played out in primaries in 2022, with establishment Republicans generally prevailing. But regardless of which wing of the Republican nominee came from, Democrats took no more than 37 percent in any major race.