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How many registered Democrats are in Idaho in 2025 and how has that changed since 2020?
Executive summary
As of mid‑2024 reporting, roughly 13% of Idaho’s registered voters — more than 125,000 people — were registered as Democrats, while Republicans made up about 59% (roughly 585,000) and unaffiliated about 26–27% [1] [2]. The Idaho Secretary of State maintains historical registration totals (including raw party counts by year) on its Voter Registration Totals pages, which allow direct comparison between 2020 and 2025 [3] [4].
1. Where the headline numbers come from: state registration totals
The authoritative state source for raw counts and year‑to‑year changes is the Idaho Secretary of State’s “Voter Registration Totals” and its data dashboards; those pages include party affiliation totals by year (including 2020 through 2025) and let researchers pull the exact registered‑Democrat counts for any snapshot date [3] [5]. The January 24, 2020 snapshot is available through a specific page of those archived totals [4].
2. Reported 2024–2025 snapshot: Democrats ≈125,000 (≈13% of registrants)
Local reporting based on Secretary of State data summarized that “over 125,000 Democrats comprise 13% of Idaho registered voters,” while Republicans were about 59% and unaffiliated about 27% — figures cited in Idaho Capital Sun coverage of 2024 and 2025 elections [2] [1]. Those articles cite the Secretary of State’s totals and election‑reporting context rather than an independent data model [2] [1].
3. What changed since 2020: use the state pages to compute exact deltas
Precise numeric change (for example, “X Democrats in January 2020 vs Y in 2025”) requires extracting the two date‑specific totals from the Secretary of State’s historical tables or dashboards; the state’s archive page explicitly provides that capability [3] [4]. Available sources do not themselves publish a single sentence saying “Democrat registrations rose/fell by N between 2020 and 2025”; researchers should download the two snapshots from the Secretary of State pages to compute the exact difference [3] [4].
4. What contextual reporting says about migration and partisan flows
Investigations into who’s moving into Idaho show the inbound migrant electorate has skewed Republican: the Idaho Statesman reported the number of Republican voters moving into Idaho from other states “dwarfs the number of Democrats,” noting about 118,702 voters who moved from out of state and that nearly 30,000 ex‑Californians were part of that flow — with Republicans outnumbering Democrats among movers from almost every state [6]. That pattern helps explain why Republican registration shares have remained large even when population growth occurred [6].
5. Turnout vs. registration: different measures, different stories
Registration percentages (e.g., Democrats ≈13%) are distinct from vote share. Ballotpedia and other election histories underscore Idaho’s long‑term Republican dominance in statewide and presidential contests; those political outcomes reflect both registration composition and turnout patterns [7] [8] [9]. Reporting that “no Democrat has won Idaho for president since 1964” or that Idaho voted Republican 100% of the time since 2000 in presidential contests, conveys electoral outcomes but not the raw party‑registration trend [9] [10].
6. Limitations, caveats and recommended next steps for precise numbers
State pages are the primary documents for exact counts and deltas; the Secretary of State archive explicitly contains the 2020 snapshot and later annual totals [3] [4]. Local coverage quotes rounded percentages and headline counts (e.g., “over 125,000 Democrats”) but does not publish a definitive, single‑line 2020→2025 delta [2] [1]. To produce an exact numeric change between 2020 and 2025, retrieve the Democrat total from the Secretary of State’s 2020 archive page and the comparable 2025 snapshot/dataset and subtract them [4] [3].
7. Competing interpretations you’ll see in coverage
Journalists who emphasize migration patterns (Idaho Statesman) argue recent in‑migrants have been disproportionately Republican, reinforcing GOP registration gains [6]. Others emphasize that registered Democrats still exist in five‑figure numbers (Idaho Capital Sun), signaling a baseline opposition even in a GOP‑dominant state [1] [2]. Both perspectives rest on the same Secretary of State data; they differ in whether they highlight party‑share percentages, absolute counts, or migration flows [6] [1] [2].
If you want, I can pull the exact registered‑Democrat counts for a specific date in 2020 and the latest 2025 snapshot from the Secretary of State pages and compute the precise numeric change and percentage change; the state’s pages linked above are the sources I would extract those numbers from [3] [4].