Idaho

Gov. Brad Little won a third term, 56.9% to 32.2% for Democrat Terri Pickens.¹ Republican Jim Risch won the Senate race with 56.5%; the runner-up, at 33.6%, was an independent, Todd Achilles. Republicans won all six other statewide offices on the ballot and kept both U.S. House seats, Russ Fulcher by 35.3 points and Mike Simpson by 11.4. Donald Trump carried Idaho by 36.5 points in 2024.

The governor’s race was 11.9 points closer than that presidential vote. Pickens drew 84 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here; Little drew 67 for every 100 of Trump’s. More people voted than in the last midterm: the votes counted for governor come to 121% of the 2022 total and 79% of the 2024 presidential vote.

The Twin Falls and Idaho Falls areas moved furthest. The Twin Falls metro area went from R+49.7 to R+32.8, a move of 16.9 points, and the Idaho Falls area from R+51.9 to R+35.2, a move of 16.7. The Boise City metro area, which cast 43% of the state’s 2024 vote, moved 11.2 points, from R+22.6 to R+11.4. The small towns and rural counties, with 26% of the vote, moved 10.5. The Coeur d’Alene area moved least: 4.9 points, from R+51.8 to R+47.0.

No county changed sides. The largest move among the bigger counties was in Bannock County, in the Pocatello area, which went from R+25.1 to R+5.1 on 31,841 votes. Pocatello’s Legislative District 29 is one of the places where Democrats gained seats in the Legislature.² Ada County, in the Boise City area, cast more votes than any other county and went from R+10.3 to R+2.5; Canyon County, in the same metro area, went from R+46.6 to R+29.5. Latah County, in the Moscow area, was the only county that moved the other way, from R+8.0 to R+15.6 on 17,746 votes.

Republicans keep the governorship and both chambers, with more than two-thirds of each: 28 of 35 Senate seats, down from 29, and 56 of 70 House seats, down from 61, in results not yet certified. Democrats hold 21 of the 105 seats, up from 15, after sweeping the districts Idaho Education News calls swing: 15 in west Boise, 26 in Blaine, Lincoln and Jerome counties, and 29 in Pocatello. “We need to come to Boise with a plan of action of the things we want to do, the things we want to fight for,” said Rep.-elect Mary Shea, a Pocatello Democrat.²

The larger Democratic caucus does not change what Republicans can do alone. The constitution sets a veto override at two-thirds of the members present in each house, and the governor is of the majority’s party.³ The Legislature does not draw Idaho’s maps. A commission of six, formed on the order of the secretary of state when a census or a court requires new districts, draws both the legislative and the congressional lines. The leaders of the two largest parties in each house each name one member and the two state party chairmen name the others, no member may hold elected or appointed office, and a plan needs two-thirds of the commission.³

The secretary of state, an elected office with a four-year term, is the state’s top elected official in charge of elections, as the Idaho Capital Sun describes it, and Phil McGrane, a Republican, was re-elected.^{3, 4} “They believe in Idaho values, and they rightfully expect us to keep delivering,” Little said of Idahoans when he spoke to supporters on election night.⁴

A constitutional amendment sent to the ballot by the Legislature becomes part of the constitution if a majority of the electors ratify it.³ One of the two on the ballot met that test. House Joint Resolution 6, which in Ballotpedia’s summary designates English the official language of Idaho, drew 63.1% yes in our count. House Joint Resolution 4, which by the same summary would have given only the Legislature the authority to legalize marijuana and other psychoactive substances, drew 33.7% and failed.^{5, 6}

Voters also rejected Proposition 1, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, a citizen initiative that the Idaho Statesman reported would have legalized abortion up to fetal viability or in medical emergencies. It drew 44.1% yes in our count.^{6, 7} A fourth question was advisory and had no yes or no: it asked voters to choose an official state gun, and the Winchester Model 1873 led with about 31 percent in Spokane Public Radio’s preliminary table.⁶

Latah County counted its ballots twice. Its clerk found that results from 2,343 ballots cast in early voting had been counted by a tabulation machine but never transferred to the reporting system. The county recounted every ballot on November 10, with the secretary of state’s office helping to oversee it, and no outcome changed. The closest question, a plant facility levy for the Moscow School District, passed with 60.34% and needed 60%. In all, 18,104 ballots were cast in the county.^{8, 9} No seat on the Idaho Supreme Court was on the November ballot; Ballotpedia lists Idaho among the states that held their supreme court elections earlier in the year.¹⁰

Republicans won again in all 10 of the offices in our count that they held, and Democrats won none. The narrowest of those wins was Mike Simpson’s U.S. House seat, by 11.4 points, followed by Attorney General Raul R. Labrador’s, by 19.6. Risch finished 22.9 points ahead of an independent and Little 24.7 ahead of a Democrat. Of the state’s 44 counties, 42 voted Republican for governor, and Latah County moved toward the party. The abortion-rights initiative failed by about 12 points, and the Legislature remains more than two-thirds Republican in both chambers.⁶

Mike Crapo’s Senate seat will be on the ballot in 2028, in a state that voted R+36.5 for president in 2024 and R+24.7 for governor this year. The governor and the other statewide executive officers serve four-year terms under the constitution, so the offices filled this year will next be on the ballot in 2030. The districts stay as they are until a new federal census or a court decision calls for new ones and the secretary of state orders a new commission; the next census is the 2030 count.³ After Proposition 1 failed, the group that sponsored it said it would ask lawmakers for exceptions to the abortion law in the coming session, the Idaho Statesman reported.⁷

The statewide results were still being checked. The State Board of Canvassers was to meet on November 13 to begin audits, with teams of auditors conducting hand recounts in randomly selected counties and precincts the following week. Latah County’s commissioners were scheduled to certify their recounted results on November 12.^{8, 9}