Democrats pour into Washington state as Republicans leave, analysis shows

Two days after the general election, an ad started playing on Seattle-area conservative talk radio station KVI. It featured a familiar voice to listeners: Kirby Wilbur, a former host on the network, and one-time leader of the state Republican Party.

“If you think taxes and crime and homelessness are outta control, just wait ‘til Governor Ferguson takes office,” Wilbur says in the ad. “Maybe it’s time to think about moving to a state where schools aren’t pushing a radical agenda, bad guys are put in jail, and your values are shared and respected.”

Wilbur arrived in Washington at 8 years old, went to Queen Anne High School and University of Washington, got married and raised a family here. But after the pandemic hit, he moved to Texas.

Now he’s a real estate agent and, according to his LinkedIn, a “refugee resettlement specialist.” (By refugees, he means Republicans interested in leaving the state of Washington.) He says the suburb of Dallas where he and his family moved in 2021 is not just politically different — the vibe is better.

“There’s not the hostility,” he told KUOW. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells, and there are Democrats and liberals here, but we all seem to kind of get along. The ugliness, I think, that was prominent in Seattle and Washington politics for a long time, isn’t here.”

So, he started helping other Washingtonians buy homes in red states.

Wilbur has tapped into a trend among disaffected conservatives in Washington. More Republicans are leaving Washington than moving here, according to one analysis last year that tracked registered voters who moved in and out of the state since 2007.

The analysis found something similar happening across the U.S.: Republicans moving to Republican states, and Democrats moving to Democratic states.

“The data definitely do seem to suggest that people are more inclined to move to states that match their ideological leanings, regardless of the ideology in the state they left,” said Ken Strasma, founder of Haystaq DNA, the consulting firm that produced the analysis.

But the impact is especially dramatic in the Pacific Northwest, where Washington and Idaho sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

“It’s kind of eye-popping,” said Andrew Hong, a data researcher who worked on the analysis. “Washington state sits second only behind Vermont in terms of how much bluer a state has gotten in this country from migration alone. In contrast, our neighbor to the east of us, Idaho, actually has gotten the most red from net migration alone.”

That’s a stark contrast: While Idaho got more Republican than any state, 61% of the people moving to Washington were Democrats. The analysis counts the net change from voters moving in and out, and the percentage change may seem small — Washington got about 1.4% more Democratic just from net migration, whereas Idaho got about 2.7% redder — but when it comes to vote margins, more than 1% can make a big difference.

If Democrats like Emily Rath are any indication, the trend will probably continue.

Rath was so desperate to leave Florida before Donald Trump’s inauguration that she and her family are now cramped into a two-bedroom Airbnb on Bainbridge Island, where the kitchen shares space with the washer and drier.

Rath is an author. To get to her writing spot in the Airbnb, she has to squeeze between the stove and the dryer. She’s been visiting Washington since childhood, but her mind kept returning to the state during Trump’s first administration — when she saw stories about then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson suing him.

“To have a state like Washington push back against some of the federal policies that were happening, to try and create any kind of a wall or a cocoon around the state citizens as best they can,” Rath said. “We just felt like there’s more hope for that here.”

Back in Florida, Rath taught African politics at the University of Northern Florida. As Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis passed a number of “anti-woke” measures, she had to remove mentions of “critical race theory” from her syllabi — and Washington state stayed at the forefront of her mind.

Rath read about Washington schools and thought about her son, who she said was struggling to get the support he needed for his dyslexia, dysgraphia (a neurological condition that affects writing skills), and ADHD.

Her love for Washington started coming out in the writing she did on the side. She set a novella in Seattle about a sports medicine student who has a one-night stand with a hockey player.

After that, she wrote a whole series of hockey romance novels, and they exploded in popularity on TikTok and became bestsellers on Amazon.

Suddenly, teaching felt less appealing. She said she had to remove mentions in her syllabi of things like “critical race theory,” because of policies passed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“DeSantis is on his way out, and it’s like, ‘My God, who’s going to take over after DeSantis?’” Rath said. “People have mentioned (former Republican Congressman) Matt Gaetz and I’ll — I don’t know if I can curse — I’ll be fucked if I live in a Florida where Matt Gaetz is my governor. I am leaving this state. I’m leaving.”

Rath and her family are looking for homes on Bainbridge Island. On her first day at the Airbnb, Rath went into Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island. They welcomed her to the Northwest by putting her hockey romance novels in the local author display.

Scott Greenstone is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.