Although Wyoming is unequivocally the most Republican state in the country, its unique demographics and ideological makeup make it perhaps the most interesting state in the Republican fold.
Early History – A Western Stopover
Wyoming was originally claimed by Spain and Mexico until the 1830s, although neither had any presence in the area. The Lewis and Clark Expedition brought the first Americans to the region in 1807, with reports of thermal activity in the area considered fiction. Fur trapping was the first major industry introduced to the state. The Oregon Trail and Union Pacific Railroads would help bring attention to Wyoming, as would the Mormon treks to Utah and gold rushes to California and Montana.
Wyoming’s first form of territorial government came in the 1872 formation of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, a group dedicated to the growth and standardization of the cattle industry in the state. The Association held significant influence in the American West and is still active today. As the industry and the railroads helped the population grow, Wyoming never experienced a massive boom like that of its neighbors, namely due to a lack of mineral rushes in the state compared to Montana or Colorado. Despite this, Wyoming still held intrinsically Western progressive-populist values, and in 1869, became the only territory to include women’s suffrage in its constitution. Wyoming was admitted as the forty-fourth state on July 10, 1890, and is the first state to allow women the right to vote, owing to its nickname “The Equality State.”
Industrialization and 20th Century Politics – The Land of Conservation
After the Homestead Act of 1862, Wyoming started to become parceled out to settlers, who built their farms on the fertile banks of the state’s rivers. Open-range cattle grazing also became a key aspect of Wyoming’s economy.
Although small amounts of gold were discovered in Wyoming, the state’s true bread and butter would be found in coal. Although typically associated with Kentucky and West Virginia, Wyoming actually produces most of the country’s coal, clocking in at 41.2% as of 2022. The state is also home to generous deposits of oil and natural gas, placing it fairly on national production lists. Wyoming is also the nation’s second-highest producer of uranium. Finally, copper also helped grow the state’s economy at the turn of the century, as the Ferris-Haggarty Mine Site in Carbon County would be a world supplier of electrification.
In addition to its views on suffrage, Wyoming also played a crucial role in environmentalism. Geological surveys of the state confirmed rumors of thermal activity in the northwestern part of Wyoming, which is one of the reasons Congress became convinced to preserve the area. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant (R-OH) signed a bill into law that designated the area as Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world. The park is home to the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano in North America. Future presidents would later set aside more land in Wyoming, such as Grover Cleveland (D-NY) designating several forest reserves, and Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY) designated Devils Tower the first national monument in the country.
Today, almost half of Wyoming is owned by the federal government.
Wyoming’s first election was held in 1892, with Benjamin Harrison (R-IN) narrowly defeating James Weaver, who ran on a Populist-Democratic fusion ticket in the state. William Jennings Bryan (D-NE) would appeal to the state’s western populist ideals in 1896, becoming the first Democrat to win the state. Although Bryan’s appeal was generally well-received in most Western states, his narrow margin in Wyoming demonstrated the strong Republican lean the state would have for practically its entire history.
Of the thirty-three elections in which Wyoming has participated, Democrats have only won eight of them, with their longest streak running from 1932 to 1940. Wyoming would last vote more Democratic than the nation at-large in 1912. Further contributing to its Republican values, Wyoming’s isolationist views translated into a strong victory for Warren Harding (R-OH) in 1920, after President Woodrow Wilson’s (D-NJ) failure to keep the U.S. out of World War I. Furthermore, with Republicans presiding over a booming economy of the 1920s, Wyoming stayed in the GOP fold.
Franklin Roosevelt’s (D-NY) New Deal policies during the Great Depression helped him carry Wyoming three times, two of which were landslide victories. Again, Wyoming’s isolationist foreign policy views almost cost FDR the state in 1940, and the softening of farmers on his policies would redeliver the state to the GOP in 1944. After 1952, Wyoming would only back one other Democrat: Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) in his 1964 landslide. Wyoming’s progressive ideals made it a decent fit for Johnson’s Great Society-themed campaign, although even then, observers considered his win Wyoming as a shock, as some deemed it “too red” for him to flip.
Johnson is the last Democrat to have won Wyoming, with only one other Democrat coming close: Bill Clinton (D-AR) in 1992.
Wyoming would continue to be defined by its industries of energy, mining, agriculture, and tourism, almost all of which would make it the Republican state it has been and still is today.
Geography – The Equality State
Although Wyoming’s geography does not affect its politics in any impactful ways, it still highlights some of the idiosyncrasies of the state’s electorate.
- Southeast Wyoming – Home to the Black Hills, Laramie County, containing the capital of Cheyenne, and Albany County, home to the University of Wyoming. At just 64,000 people, Cheyenne is the state’s largest city. Albany County is something of a swing county, mainly dictated by its college town profile. Joe Biden (D-DE) narrowly flipped Albany County over Donald Trump (R-FL) in 2020.
- Northwest Wyoming – Home to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, as well the cities of Cody and Jackson. Teton County is the only Democratic county in the state, mostly swayed by seasonal voters who populate the resort towns and ski villages. George W. Bush (R-TX) is the last Republican to have won Teton County in 2000. Cody, on the other hand, is a conservative working-class city, and is considered the “Rodeo Capital” of the world.
- Wyoming At-Large – The rest of Wyoming is fairly monolithic in its voting blocs. Wyoming is the least densely-populated state behind Alaska.
Current Political Leanings – A Uniquely Republican Stronghold
In 1992, Ross Perot (I-TX) was able to capture 25% of Wyoming’s ancestrally libertarian voters, giving George H. W. Bush (R-TX) a shockingly narrow five-point win in a state Republicans are otherwise guaranteed a high double-digit victory at minimum. Perot, however, displayed just how sectionalist Wyoming’s GOP voters are. On the national stage, Wyoming Republicans are intensely libertarian and much less Christian-conservative than other Republican states. Hot-button social issues don’t rally GOP voters here as they do in other states. Wyoming is also home to one of the starkest gaps in education by demographics. Although Wyoming ranks fortieth for college graduates, it actually ranks second in terms of high school diplomas. The dichotomy created by this means that despite a lack of college-educated voters, Wyoming’s population remains decently-educated working-class.
The state’s economy is also something atypical of other Republican states. While most of the nation floundered amidst the Great Recession in 2008, Wyoming’s energy sector buoyed the state’s economy. However, when energy prices fall, Wyoming falls hard, and with Democrats’ growing calls for the abolition of fossil fuels, the state’s seemingly ceiling-bound GOP electorate might find more room for growth.
Despite such intrinsically progressive-populist ideals, the Democratic Party has consistently floundered in the Equality State, even before its recent embrace of hyper-progressive politics. Republicans have had a lock on both Senate seats in Wyoming for decades, with Democrats having last won a Senate race in 1970 and having held both seats simultaneously in 1962.
In the state legislature, Republicans have held the State Senate since 1967 and the State House since 1938.
The governor’s mansion, however, is much more on the table, as most governorships are for both parties, regardless of typical partisan lean. Since gubernatorial races are more about candidate quality than politics, Democrats have been able to find openings when politically expedient. Dave Freudenthal (D) not only flipped the governor’s office in 2002, but he was largely re-elected with 70% of the vote in 2006. Republicans have held the office since, but throughout its history, Wyoming has had both parties enjoy cyclical control of the governor’s office.
Overall, the state finds itself in a near-optimal balance of political ideals: libertarianism with some restraints and exceptions, energy and land usage in check with conservation, and isolationism tied with realistic foreign policy.
On paper, Wyoming’s ancestrally progressive ideals should make it at least somewhat more competitive on the state level. While it could be said that as long as the GOP retains some form of populism in its mission statement, the state will remain in their fold, it realistically can be said that as long the Republican Party remains intact altogether, Wyoming will always find itself a guaranteed GOP victory.
