Latah County, ID

[Fascism Must Be Defeated]

This county had an insanely strong Trump performance, the strongest since 2000 when Bush benefited from high Nader support. Trump winning here isn't so surprising given how poorly the election went for Harris + Democratic underperformance on college campuses, but the magnitude of the swing is very peculiar and not similar to swings in similar places. This is underlined by the fact that Whitman County WA, another college county literally across the state border, had a fairly light Republican swing and voted for Harris. Why did Latah specifically have such a dramatic Republican swing?

(Also, because I know people are going to say it's because of the insane fundie cult, it def isn't. They are a small minority in the town and were voting there in 2020, 2016, etc.)

[Tekken_Guy]

I wonder if the murders from 2 years ago played a role and there was backlash to soft-on-crime Democrats.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I wonder if the murders from 2 years ago played a role and there was backlash to soft-on-crime Democrats.

Was thinking about this too - is there speculation that the killer could be an illegal immigrant or something?

The other theory could be self-sorting amongst people attending colleges - remember every 4 years there is close to 100% turnover in the student body at most colleges so perhaps being in a red state attracted a significantly more Republican cohort than last time around.

I think precinct results will be telling - for instance Brazos County, TX (home to Texas A&M) had a double-digit shift right - at first I thought this was due to Texas A&M self-sorting but it appears that the A&M campus swung left again, and the hard swing right was mainly due to large swings right amongst the non-white population elsewhere in the County, and turnout on the campus and these non-white areas (Dem's primary base in the County) being bad.

In Latah County, I could imagine something simillar where perhaps student turnout was really bad, but there's not really a large non-white population off the college campus like in Brazos County

[ottermax]

Besides the murders which probably swayed a substantial number voters or turned off others (it was a pretty horrifying experience for those who lived through it), I think the Republican migrations to Idaho have also probably influenced the college students who attend University of Idaho. They are more likely now to be Republican partisans than in the past.

[ottermax]

I wonder if the murders from 2 years ago played a role and there was backlash to soft-on-crime Democrats.

Was thinking about this too - is there speculation that the killer could be an illegal immigrant or something?

The other theory could be self-sorting amongst people attending colleges - remember every 4 years there is close to 100% turnover in the student body at most colleges so perhaps being in a red state attracted a significantly more Republican cohort than last time around.

I think precinct results will be telling - for instance Brazos County, TX (home to Texas A&M) had a double-digit shift right - at first I thought this was due to Texas A&M self-sorting but it appears that the A&M campus swung left again, and the hard swing right was mainly due to large swings right amongst the non-white population elsewhere in the County, and turnout on the campus and these non-white areas (Dem's primary base in the County) being bad.

In Latah County, I could imagine something simillar where perhaps student turnout was really bad, but there's not really a large non-white population off the college campus like in Brazos County

The murderer is pretty well known - the search for him was a really stressful time period for residents of Moscow and students because it was a really bizarre case of cold blooded murder with no motive to this day.

[Roll Roons]

I wonder if the murders from 2 years ago played a role and there was backlash to soft-on-crime Democrats.

Was thinking about this too - is there speculation that the killer could be an illegal immigrant or something?

The other theory could be self-sorting amongst people attending colleges - remember every 4 years there is close to 100% turnover in the student body at most colleges so perhaps being in a red state attracted a significantly more Republican cohort than last time around.

I think precinct results will be telling - for instance Brazos County, TX (home to Texas A&M) had a double-digit shift right - at first I thought this was due to Texas A&M self-sorting but it appears that the A&M campus swung left again, and the hard swing right was mainly due to large swings right amongst the non-white population elsewhere in the County, and turnout on the campus and these non-white areas (Dem's primary base in the County) being bad.

In Latah County, I could imagine something simillar where perhaps student turnout was really bad, but there's not really a large non-white population off the college campus like in Brazos County

The killer was very much American, so it would be less about fear of crime committed by illegal immigrants than about crime in general. The 2022 murders were the first ones to happen in Moscow since 2015, so it's understandable that people would get rattled.

[RBH]

2024
county: Trump 51, Harris 43. 20832 votes.
Moscow: Harris 53, Trump 41. 14267 votes
rest of county: Trump 73, Harris 23. 6565 votes

you can't really do a comparison of 2020 to 2024 because the 2020 absentees weren't allocated by precinct

the results from 4 precincts with high D averages next to the University

Moscow 6: 55/38 Harris
Moscow 8: 64/31 Harris
Moscow 13: 61/34 Harris
Moscow 14: 63/32 Harris
Moscow 16: 56/39 Harris
Moscow 18: 64/32 Harris

those 6 precincts in the 2022 Gov race

Moscow 6: 50/41 Dem
Moscow 8: 58/31 Dem
Moscow 13: 53/41 Rep
Moscow 14: 56/38 Dem
Moscow 16: 57/32 Dem
Moscow 18: 58/34 Dem

Worth noting the Dem nominee for Governor lost the county 55/34 in 2022. So Harris was slightly improving on a 34% countywide showing in some campus-ish precincts, and in one precinct, she ran behind the Dem Governor candidate.

[Rhode Islander First, American Second]

It’s probably a combo of what everyone has said: piss poor turnout of college students, a shift right among college students (particularly the Greek life types and there are a lot of those at University of Idaho), and Republican self-sorting at that college. Would also be worth checking to see if any laws changed in Idaho about out of state student registration.

[TheReckoning]

Uvalde Texas swung hard right despite the mass shooting there in 2022, so I don’t know if high-profile, one-off crime really changes this stuff.

[RBH]

Uvalde Texas swung hard right despite the mass shooting there in 2022, so I don’t know if crime really changes this stuff.

Uvalde's also next to counties swinging R on the border and it's 70%+ Hispanic, so..

[CentristRepublican]

This county had an insanely strong Trump performance, the strongest since 2000 when Bush benefited from high Nader support. Trump winning here isn't so surprising given how poorly the election went for Harris + Democratic underperformance on college campuses, but the magnitude of the swing is very peculiar and not similar to swings in similar places. This is underlined by the fact that Whitman County WA, another college county literally across the state border, had a fairly light Republican swing and voted for Harris. Why did Latah specifically have such a dramatic Republican swing?

(Also, because I know people are going to say it's because of the insane fundie cult, it def isn't. They are a small minority in the town and were voting there in 2020, 2016, etc.)

It could be that, while they're still a small minority, they're a growing minority. Might be worth pointing out that the county also swung slightly R in 2020, which may be due to the insane fundie population slowly but surely growing in the area?

[He's turned to dust now, one of the chosen few]

This county had an insanely strong Trump performance, the strongest since 2000 when Bush benefited from high Nader support. Trump winning here isn't so surprising given how poorly the election went for Harris + Democratic underperformance on college campuses, but the magnitude of the swing is very peculiar and not similar to swings in similar places. This is underlined by the fact that Whitman County WA, another college county literally across the state border, had a fairly light Republican swing and voted for Harris. Why did Latah specifically have such a dramatic Republican swing?

(Also, because I know people are going to say it's because of the insane fundie cult, it def isn't. They are a small minority in the town and were voting there in 2020, 2016, etc.)

It could be that, while they're still a small minority, they're a growing minority. Might be worth pointing out that the county also swung slightly R in 2020, which may be due to the insane fundie population slowly but surely growing in the area?

One assumes that much of that swing would be down to remote schooling, no?

[Linda Van der Hampel]

It was probably the student murders and the perception that Dems are weak on crime.

[Linda Van der Hampel]

I wonder if the murders from 2 years ago played a role and there was backlash to soft-on-crime Democrats.

Yes, it playd a role.

[MaynardFriedman]

There are a few different factors that caused the giant swing to Trump:

• Latah County has received an influx of far-right migrants. The massive run-up in real estate values in Coeur d'Alene is pushing them into more rural areas. The non-university employers in Moscow are unusual in their employment composition, being friendly to right-wingers.
• The right-wing shift in the panhandle is influencing the student body of the University of Idaho to some extent. The student precincts voted for Harris but her performance was as close to the Kerry 04 performance as any, which is very weak.

The idea that the murders influenced voting behavior is laughable. You associate Moscow with the killing, no one living there does - it's their home or where they go to school.