Posts published in August 2012

The electoral college has narrowed serious campaigning for president to so few states that analysts now talk of no more than a couple of dozen counties, in a third as many states, as being especially crucial. None of those counties, obviously, are in Idaho.

Like every state it borders (debatably excepting Nevada), Idaho’s electorate votes for president are already very nearly locked. The Gem State’s four almost (remember: the voter isn’t over till it’s counted) certainly will go to Republican Mitt Romney. No surprise there. That puts Idaho in line with Montana, Wyoming and Utah, and on the other side from Washington, Oregon and (probably) Nevada.

Presidential years usually are good years in Idaho for Republicans (the reverse applies in most blue states), but that can vary. An especially strong Republican vote for president can carry down the ballot, shifting otherwise races. The number of legislative seats Democrats win this fall, for example, may relate to just how large a majority Romney wins.

This fluctuates more than you might think.

Taking the very long range of history, the highest vote percentage (78.1%) Idaho has ever given to a presidential nominee – Ronald Reagan included – was to a Democrat, though for that you have to go back to 1896, when the nominee was William Jennings Bryan. The last Democrat to win Idaho was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, though he led by only about 5,000 votes over Barry Goldwater, who went down to major crashing defeat nationally.

Since 1968, Republicans have won every time with decisive margins, but less uniformly as you might think. Reagan peaked at a very strong 72.4% in 1984, but his successor George H.W. Bush took just 62.1% - quite a comedown. And in 1992, eight years after Reagan’s smashing win, when Ross Perot won a piece of the vote, Bush got only 42%. (Is that an indication that, under certain circumstances, a portion of those Republican votes can be peeled off?) Four years later Robert Dole again won an outright majority, but only barely, at 52.2%. And the 90’s was when the Idaho Democratic Party already was in collapse, when it was elected near-record low numbers of legislators and county officials.

George W. Bush did considerably better, getting about two-thirds of the Idaho vote in his two races. But in 2008, a year when Idaho Democrats did a little better locally than they often had in presidential years, John McCain was back down to 61.2%. The odds are Romney will do a bit better, but by how much we have yet to see. The Republican presidential norm seems to be in the low sixties.

One other note is about counties. Blaine County is the only Idaho county to have voted Democratic in each of the last five presidential contests, and it was the only one in Idaho to do so in 2000 and 2004. (Before 1992 it had not done so since 1964.) But in 2008 only two other counties, Latah and Teton, joined it, and in 1996 just four counties (Blaine, Latah, Nez Perce and Shoshone) went Democratic. The pattern has shown some shift away from the old Democratic resource counties like Shoshone and Nez Perce, and toward counties with other bases, like resort-oriented Blaine and Teton. What will the pattern show this time?

That may turn a great deal on just how close this presidential contests turns out to be.

Most of the United States – the lower 48 at least – is in drought, has been for many weeks, and various kinds of disaster loom in many places.

Idaho is luckier than most of the country. In this year of water trouble in many places, it has two advantages.

One is the part Idahoans have no control over. The Northwest generally got lucky this year, with decent winter snowpack and adequate spring rain, coupled with mostly (and relatively) moderately temperatures this summer. Most of the country wasn’t so fortunate.

The other part, which Idaho has been able to affect, is water management. And that may come into important play in the next few years if Idaho’s summers start to match more closely with the nation’s.

For all the rustic and rural feel of Idaho’s water system (it doesn’t seem especially high-tech), it is one of the most sophisticated water management systems in the country. It is thoroughly developed, both in close watch of the water supply and in overseeing how the water is used. Aquifers are not unusual underground water systems nationally, but Idaho’s seem to be better managed than most; aquifer recharge, to make up for normal drawdowns, is a significant part of water management in the Gem State. None of this is to suggest that Idaho’s system is perfect or that there aren’t any legitimate criticisms, but an Idahoan familiar with his state’s system would have some cause to look down on what many other states do.

The Snake River Basin Adjudication is a major part of that. The SRBA, now about 25 years old, may seem to many Idahoans an eternally running, neverending court case that achieves little. And they would be wrong. Most western states have adjudications. And generally, they have been running far longer than the SRBA and are nowhere near as close to completion, and that includes adjudications far smaller than the Snake River’s. (The SRBA is the largest water adjudication in the country.) Idaho probably stands as the nationwide leader in this area.

When the SRBA is done, water use for nearly all of Idaho will be codified, and people throughout the basin (which takes in 87 percent of the state) will know where they stand – how much water there is, and who gets to use how much and for what. That’s powerful knowledge.

Just how powerful could easily turn up, before long, in Idaho politics.

Idaho is becoming increasingly urban and especially suburban. Most of the water used in the state is used by irrigators, to water sometimes water-intensive crops in a near-desert climate. Up to this point, there’s been generally enough water to go around – mostly, and most of the time. But recent years have seen a series of water calls (insistence on delivery by senior water right holders) in agricultural areas. What happens when the water supply is stretched thinly enough that urban areas are told: Your junior water rights mean you may be cut off?

Things may not unfold quite that way. But a few more dry years and more urban population growth could put the long-running rural domination of much of Idaho politics to its most severe test.