President Joe Biden is on track for victory in Washington and Oregon this fall, while Donald Trump has a big lead in Idaho

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon will remain in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­umn in this year’s piv­otal­ly impor­tant pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, while Ida­ho will stay solid­ly Repub­li­can, a new tri-state sur­vey that was recent­ly con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute indicates. 

From April 13th to 16th, Civiqs inter­viewed 1,012 vot­ers across the Pacif­ic North­west for NPI. Our poll finds that Pres­i­dent Joe Biden holds a dou­ble dig­it lead over his pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump in both Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon, while Trump is ahead by an even larg­er mar­gin in Ida­ho. In the Pacif­ic North­west as a whole, a major­i­ty of vot­ers sup­port Biden, and he is on track to win the pop­u­lar vote across the three states that are home to the Cas­cade Range and the Colum­bia Riv­er watershed. 

The key numbers:

• PNW toplines: 51% of respon­dents sup­port Biden, 40% sup­port Trump
• Wash­ing­ton: 54% sup­port Biden, 39% sup­port Trump
• Ore­gon: 54% sup­port Biden, 34% sup­port Trump
• Ida­ho: 63% sup­port Trump, 28% sup­port Biden

Trump has a more than two-to-one lead in Ida­ho, while Biden’s lead in Ore­gon is a stout twen­ty points. In Wash­ing­ton, Biden’s lead in this sur­vey is fif­teen points. His stand­ing here dove­tails neat­ly with the num­bers from our last statewide poll of Wash­ing­ton in Feb­ru­ary, con­duct­ed by anoth­er one of our poll­sters, Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling. 

None of these find­ings are at all sur­pris­ing, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Washington/Oregon and Ida­ho have been on oppo­site sides of pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics for decades. 

Still, it is use­ful to have this data. 

This is NPI’s very first tri-state poll, a project we’re thrilled to have brought to fruition, and it’s great to have num­bers from each of the states with­in our area of focus. 

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon last vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for Pres­i­dent in 1984 when Ronald Rea­gan was seek­ing a sec­ond term; Ida­ho last vot­ed for a Demo­c­rat for Pres­i­dent in 1964 when Lyn­don Baines John­son was seek­ing to be retained by vot­ers for a full term. Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon have vot­ed togeth­er in every pres­i­den­tial elec­tion since 1968, when Wash­ing­ton vot­ers gave the state’s nine Elec­toral Col­lege votes to Hubert Humphrey and Ore­gon vot­ers gave their six Elec­toral Col­lege votes to Richard Nixon. (Wash­ing­ton showed bet­ter judg­ment than its neigh­bors in that impor­tant election!) 

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic strength comes pri­mar­i­ly from the Inter­state 5 cor­ri­dor. Begin­ning with the Cana­di­an bor­der to the north and con­clud­ing at the south­ern edge of the Willamette Val­ley, most of the pop­u­la­tion cen­ters I‑5 pass­es through are very Demo­c­ra­t­ic, includ­ing the cities of Belling­ham, Everett, Seat­tle, Taco­ma, Olympia, Van­cou­ver, Port­land, Salem, and Eugene (and their suburbs). 

Ida­ho has blue urban areas too — its cap­i­tal and largest city of Boise is a blue oasis in a very red state — but Boise’s sub­urbs aren’t as pro­gres­sive, and the Boise area does­n’t have the elec­toral mus­cle that the I‑5 cor­ri­dor has in Wash­ing­ton and Oregon. 

In 2020, the Biden/Harris tick­et received 57.97% of the vote in Wash­ing­ton, 56.45% in Ore­gon, and 33.09% in Ida­ho. The Trump/Pence tick­et received 38.77% of the vote in Wash­ing­ton, 40.37% in Ore­gon, and 63.89% in Ida­ho. Our sur­vey sug­gests that the 2024 results may not be very dif­fer­ent. No part of our region has been a pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground for a very long time, and that will almost sure­ly remain the case in 2024.

Here is the exact text of the ques­tion we asked and the answers we received: 

QUESTION: If the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion were being held today, who would you vote for to be Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States?

ANSWERS FROM THE ENTIRE PACIFIC NORTHWEST SAMPLE:

• Joe Biden: 51%
• Don­ald Trump: 40% 
• Not sure: 9%

ANSWERS FROM WASHINGTON STATE RESPONDENTS:

• Joe Biden: 54%
• Don­ald Trump: 39%
• Not sure: 7%

ANSWERS FROM OREGON RESPONDENTS:

• Joe Biden: 54%
• Don­ald Trump: 34%
• Not sure: 11%

ANSWERS FROM IDAHO RESPONDENTS:

• Joe Biden: 28%
• Don­ald Trump: 63%
• Not sure: 9%

Our poll of 1,012 like­ly vot­ers was in the field from April 13th-16th, 2024. 

The sur­vey was con­duct­ed entire­ly online, among select­ed mem­bers of the Civiqs research pan­el, and it has a mar­gin of error of ± 3.4% at the 95% con­fi­dence lev­el. 598 of the respon­dents inter­viewed were from Wash­ing­ton, 246 were from Ore­gon, and 168 were from Ida­ho. (Reflect­ing its larg­er pop­u­la­tion as mea­sured in the last nation­al cen­sus, Wash­ing­ton has as many elec­toral votes as Ore­gon and Ida­ho put togeth­er — twelve! — and that’s why the sam­ple has more Wash­ing­ton vot­ers in it.)

Tomor­row, we’ll share the find­ings from our gener­ic con­gres­sion­al bal­lot question.