National politics are ‘killing Republicans’ in WA elections. Can that change?
Editor's Note: This story is part of a five-part series by The Olympian that examines how the nation’s political divide is reshaping the future of Washington state.
Washington state leaders are often at odds with the Trump administration and allying with like-minded leaders in Oregon and California. The state has earned a national reputation as a reliably blue state, but that was not always the case.
The state, like many others, went through periods of growth and economic transformation that changed its overall political leanings, as well as its role on the national stage.
The story of how the state became a seemingly Democratic bastion may provide insight into its future trajectory and place in an increasingly polarized national political landscape. The future is uncertain. At stake is the spectrum of thought in the Legislature, the strength of the business industry and who chooses to reside here.
The state was mostly Republican after its founding in 1889, said T.M. Sell, a retired professor of political economy at Highline College in Des Moines.
“This was not Republican in the way you might think of it today,” Sell said. “It was a very different party then. We also were a bit progressive.”
The state leaned blue like much of the country did following the Great Depression, Sell said. The east side of the state became more reliably red following the election of President Ronald Reagan, but the west side did not.
The east-west divide persists to this day, aided by the natural separation created by the Cascade Mountains. Over time, the west side developed a more cosmopolitan culture and economy while the east side kept more of its rural character. The west side now holds a larger population that leans blue.
Looking at the historical record, Washington state voters have consistently elected Democratic presidents since 1988 and Democratic governors since 1985.
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Still, presidential races remained competitive in the state in the early 2000s. That changed more recently.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential contest in the state with 58% of the vote while Republican Donald Trump got just under 39%. In 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris won the state with 57% of the vote while Trump got 39%.
Data from the 2024 election shows every state moved to the right, according to ABC News. However, Washington state had the smallest swing to the right of any state.
Since the late 1990s, the Republican Party has occasionally controlled the state Senate, with the last time being in 2017. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has managed to control the governorship, House of Representatives and Senate from 2005 to 2012, and more recently from 2018 to present.
Why did WA state turn blue?
Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University, said the state as a whole turned dependably blue following a period of “party sorting” that began around the late 1960s and really solidified in the 1990s.
“If you go back to the 1960s, even as late as the 1970s, 1980s, you could go to the Republican Party and you had conservatives, but you also had very liberal Republicans … the party was ideologically diverse,” Clayton said.
The same was true about Democrats, he added.
Over time, conservatives came to dominate the Republican Party while liberals did the same in the Democratic Party, Clayton said. This process effectively diminished the continued feasibility of “purple states,” he said, allowing places like Washington to become more solidly blue.
Economic changes affected people’s political leanings, Clayton said.
The transition from a post-industrial economy to an Information Age, globalized economy led to a stark divide between “anywhere people” and “somewhere people,” he said.
David Goodhart, a British journalist and author, wrote about these two groups of people in his 2017 book, “The Road to Somewhere.” In it, he describes “anywhere people” as highly mobile individuals who moved to urban areas for high-paying jobs.
“Somewhere people,” on the other hand, remained rooted in their communities where they got left behind by the new economy. The book uses these concepts to explain Brexit in the United Kingdom and the rise of Trump in the U.S.
Clayton believes the same ideas can be applied to Washington state.
“If you’re a farmer out in Yakima, your identity is very much bound up with that place and with the people of the groups that you know in that place,” Clayton said. “Anywhere people are more likely to get a college education. Their identities are not bound by a place so much. They’ve achieved identities based upon their life experiences.”
This led to growing income inequality between these two types of groups, Clayton said. This trend helped solidify more rural areas as conservative and more urban areas as liberal.
“If you’re an anywhere person, if you have the types of skills where you can live anywhere, you’re likely to go to places where there’s high incomes, where they’re going to reward you,” Clayton said. “Those tended to be on the coast in Washington.”
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Clayton pointed to the tech and aerospace industries in the state’s west as places that drew “anywhere people” while extractive industries declined in the east.
Population growth in the west then outpaced growth in the east, meaning the number of people living in Democrat-leaning areas grew faster than those living in Republican-leaning areas, he said.
Likewise, Sell said, the wealth concentrated in the more populous and Democrat-leaning west side means Republicans have a hard time in statewide contests.
“We’ve only gotten bluer, simply because people are comfortable enough that what the Republicans are largely selling doesn’t appeal to most folks anymore,” Sell said.
“So, while they (Republicans) hang on in sort of the fringes — Eastern Washington, some rural Western Washington counties — by and large, they’re getting killed,” he added.
How has political polarization affected politics?
Clayton drew a distinction between party sorting and political polarization. Whereas the former has homogenized the ideology of the respective parties, he said the latter has to do with how far apart the parties are on particular policy issues.
“If you go back to, for instance, the presidential election and 2000 with George W. Bush and Al Gore, the parties weren’t that far apart,” Clayton said.
Polarization increased in the 2000s and started picking up steam with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, Clayton said.
“I think you see the Republican Party move dramatically more to the right in response to Obama’s election, and then Donald Trump substantially moved them more into a right-wing, populist or authoritarian direction,” he said.
Meanwhile, the contemporary progressive wing of the Democratic Party has become much more vocal, he said.
However, Clayton said the Democratic Party as a whole has not agreed on how to respond to the reelection of Trump and his brand of conservative populism.
“There’s a deep split inside the Democratic Party, both nationally and in the state of Washington, about how to respond,” Clayton said. “Some argue the Democrats should become more progressive. They should adopt a populist theme themselves from the left. Others argue that the Democratic Party should move to the center and be more moderate.”
The prominence of national politics has greatly influenced state politics, Clayton said. The nationalization of the political parties means local candidates now run on national issues rather than local issues, further solidifying states as either red or blue.
“The same issues that divide our campaigns in Washington divide campaigns in Arizona or campaigns in Florida,” Clayton said.
“They’re all nationalized issues now,” he continued. “They’re ideological divides as opposed to divides about a particular place or a particular problem in a community.”
Examples of these nationalized issues include abortion rights, immigration, foreign conflicts and the economy, among many others.
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Sell said polarization at the national level is only hurting Republicans in Washington state.
“It’s made the state bluer if anything,” Sell said. “It’s killing Republicans here, simply because, one, voters look at that and say, ‘I don’t want to vote for that.’ And two, it’s put the fear of MAGA into elected Republicans who might otherwise be a little closer to the center.”
What does population data tell us?
Population data indicates state growth is largely affected by migration, so how that plays out could affect the political makeup of the state.
More than two-thirds of the state’s population growth occurred in the state’s five largest counties in 2025, according to April 2025 data from the Washington State Office of Financial Management (OFM).
Those counties, in order of annual change in total population, are King, Pierce, Snohomish, Spokane and Clark. Spokane is the only one of the five that is located on the state’s east side. This trend has continued for more than a decade.
Estimates from last year indicate the state’s total population grew by about 79,400 people to reach 8.1 million as of April 2025. This growth is slower than the annual average of 98,000 people from 2010-20, according to a June 2025 OFM news release.
Net migration, the number of people moving in minus the people moving out, accounted for about 82% of the state’s population growth while natural change, which is birth minus deaths, accounted for about 18% in 2024, per OFM.
The 2025 estimate shows net migration accounted for 78% of population growth while natural change made up 22%.
For 2024, net migration reached 69,270, which is about 2,784 less than the 2023 number, per the latest OFM data.
A 2024 OFM report states about 38% of people moving to Washington came from California, Idaho, Oregon and Texas. About 39% of people moving to Washington arrived from other states and 23% came from other countries.
OFM determined these numbers using surrendered driver’s license data.
What does the future hold?
Both Clayton and Sell said Washington’s political future is difficult to predict. Sell said it will likely take a watershed moment like the Great Depression to produce fundamental political change.
For his part, Clayton said he does not see Democrats losing their dominant position in the state anytime soon.
“I don’t see the Republican Party being able to contend in statewide races,” Clayton said. “They’ll continue to dominate in Eastern Washington, for instance, but I don’t see them being able to contest the statewide races in the near future as long as it continues to be the party of Trump.”
Chris Vance, a former state representative and former chair of the state Republican Party, said he expects the state Democrats to move further to the left. He hopes a more moderate Republican Party can appeal to voters and stem that tide.
“The voters hate Trump more than they hate the policies the Democrats have enacted in Olympia,” Vance said.
In light of heightened polarization across the country, some people could theoretically choose to move in or out of Washington state for political reasons. Both Clayton and Sell said they were not sure if that has occurred to a significant extent.
Todd Schaefer, chair of the Political Science Department at Central Washington University, said he’s skeptical of migration significantly affecting the state’s political makeup because most people choose to live close to family or where they can find work.
“Voting with your feet, most people don’t have that luxury,” Schaefer said.
A more direct impact of party sorting and polarization has been the rise of movements to cleave the state in two, with legislative proposals to create a new Republican-dominated state east of the Cascade Mountain Range, for instance.
Sell said the people in Eastern Washington are important to the state economy. He questioned whether Democratic lawmakers are smart enough to keep them in mind.
“If they’re feeling excluded, left behind, et cetera, you sort of have to look at policy and say, ‘What can we do to address that so that they feel like we’re on the same team?’” Sell said.
Schaefer said there’s likely a limit to how blue the state can become without alienating the more free market-minded technology industry. He said the state has a libertarian streak too.
“People fight against income tax, the budget, or you see (Governor Bob Ferguson) wanting more law and order,” he said. “... We’re probably more liberal, except for the east side — but economically, it’s not as liberal as you might think.”
Amanda McKinney, a Yakima County commissioner who’s running as a Republican for Congress, said even business people who may be socially liberal are upset with how progressive policies are affecting the state economy.
“It’s been over a decade, but these super progressive policies are impacting county budgets, city budgets and state budgets,” McKinney said in a September phone interview with McClatchy. “... There’s a change coming.”
McClatchy staff reporter Simone Carter contributed to this article.
This story was originally published June 1, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "National politics are ‘killing Republicans’ in WA elections. Can that change?."
