Democrats face daunting odds in Wyoming.
The state party is anemic. The federal delegation is solid red. Wyoming went to Donald Trump by the highest margin in the election in 2020, with the former president beating challenger Joe Biden 69.9% to 26.6%, or by 193,559 votes to 73,491.
Nonetheless, Democrats in the state think they’ve got a shot at building something for the future.
The challenge
As of March, registered Republicans outnumbered registered Democrats 195,592 to 46,037—out of 279,864 total registered voters.
Demographically, the state is very white. 92.5% of Wyoming’s 578,759-strong population identify as white; Hispanics and Latinos account for 10%, Native Americans for 2.7%, and Black and Asian round out the population at 1.7% and 1.1% respectively.
The historical trends don’t indicate there’s much room to flip blue. Wyoming hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The last Democrat in the federal delegation, Teno Roncalio, left office in 1978.
“It’s a difficult task,” Joe Barbuto, chair of the Wyoming Democratic Party, told Blue Tent. “I tell people that it can feel like trying to push water up a hill with a fork.”
Wyoming has a strong libertarian streak, said Sara Burlingame, former member of the state House of Representatives. Burlingame attributed the state’s conservative bent to that ideology.
“We have a very libertarian government that stays out of the business of private citizens,” Burlingame said.
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Wyoming voting results
What party leaders say
Despite the hurdles ahead, Barbuto believes Democrats have a good shot at growing the party. There are important pieces in place organizationally to build and organize, with resources for campaigns and volunteers and more money than ever coming in. Plus, Barbuto said, the Democrats have “an understanding of how to utilize new technology, and a more data-driven approach to campaigning.”
While the important gains for Democrats in registration and at the polls are working, there's a deficit in the size of the electorate that is receptive to the argument.
“The component that’s missing is more Democratic voters,” Barbuto said. “That sounds overly simplistic, but it’s what we need more than anything else to be successful.”
The bodies are there. Around 50% of eligible voters in the state aren’t registered, a large pool of voters to turn on, motivate and get to turn out at the polls as Democrats. Barbuto referred to Stacey Abrams in Georgia as an example of the kind of slow and steady work that can change the political reality on the ground.
“The wheel doesn’t have to be reinvented, only tweaked,” Barbuto said.
Most of all, Democrats need to target their outreach to the material interests of the people they’re looking to serve. A state that’s heavily reliant on agriculture and the oil and gas industry, Wyoming has been hit hard by economic and political policies put in place at the national level by former President Donald Trump and the GOP—and the state Republican Party hasn’t been able to meet the challenge to make things better. Democrats need to “capture that moment,” he told Blue Tent.
“Revenues and jobs are being lost in our state and folks are seeing that the majority party hasn’t had any solutions, only false rhetoric,” Barbuto said. “Once lives and livelihoods are at stake, people begin to rethink their political choices.”
What activists say
Burlingame agreed. The GOP has underserved Wyoming working families for too long, she said, and it’s far past time that Democrats bring that message to the public.
“A price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia is cutting us out of natural gas and oil,” Burlingame said. “The worldwide demand for coal is dropping prices because of our inability to access the Chinese markets.”
Unfortunately, the rhetoric from the far right that evades the responsibility of the GOP in that downturn has caught on, Burlingame said, and it’s had dire consequences on the state’s political culture. Conservative Republicans in the state are being taken down by members of the QAnon movement, making even the barest attempts at governing together impossible.
“In the primary, there was a narrative that said, ‘moderate Republicans were knocked out by conservative Republicans,’” Burlingame said. “But that is empirically, fundamentally false. That is not true. What happened was, is that conservative Republicans were knocked out by far right-wing Republicans and people who are missing the distinction. They’re missing everything.”
Given the political reality in Wyoming—Democrats are a hyper-minority at the state level and non-existent at the federal level—it’s important in Burlingame’s view to find inroads to talk to GOP voters. Otherwise, there’s no path forward.
“I can’t go and ask for a Republican vote with that in my back pocket,” Burlingame said. “You know, I say: ‘You’re all evil scumbags. Could I please have your vote?’”
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Wyoming Demographics
The path to victory
Defining “victory” in Wyoming is different than in closer states like North Carolina or even Texas. It’s just not realistic to expect the state to flip blue anytime soon.
But there are reasons to have some hope that things can get better for the party. The infrastructure in the state that was built over the Trump years by activated progressives has the potential to flip some state seats, a slow start that could eventually bring Democrats closer to parity. And there’s no reason to expect the 2020 electorate—what Burlingame referred to as “extremist Trump backlash”—will come out again in the midterms.
It offers some opportunity and a glimmer of hope that Wyoming might be a little less deeply red next election cycle.
Barbuto told Blue Tent that under his leadership, the party is on the right track to have a long-term plan that doesn’t rely on looking at things on a two-year election cycle basis, but for a more patient rebuilding of the Wyoming Democrats.
“The more and longer we give fidelity to proven strategies and initiatives, the more opportunity we will have for success,” Barbuto said.
