The legislature opens its 2026 session with the Democrats firmly in control of state government. Democrats have a 59-39 majority in the House of Representatives and a 30-19 majority in the Senate and won all of state executive offices with an average margin of victory of 57 to 44%.
Washington’s march from Independent swing state to solidly Democratic is well known. We have not voted for a Republican for President of Governor since the mid-80s. Less frequently discussed is the sorting that has driven this growing Democratic majority.
Of the state’s 49 legislative districts, 28 are now represented by entirely by Democrats (two Representatives and one Senator); 18 entirely by Republicans; and only 3 have at least one member from each party. A generation ago, the 2000 legislature was balanced with 18 all blue, 16 all red, and 15 purple districts. Control of the state legislature was divided in 13 of the 25 years between 1992 and 2017 but Democrats have controlled both houses since 2018. Party identification, as measured by The Elway Poll, went from an average of D+1 over the 1990s to an average of D+21 in 2025.
The old “Cascade Curtain” that once described Washington politics (Democratic Western Washington vs. Republican Eastern Washington), has been replaced with an urban-rural divide that mirrors national political trends. What happened?
Two factors contributed mightily to these changes: 1) the polarization of the political parties; and 2) changes in the demographic profile of the state’s population.
American political parties have sorted themselves to an unprecedented degree along demographic and identity lines, including gender, race, age, education, ideology and geography. Neither party is the centrist “big tent” it was a generation ago, which has contributed to the polarization and the demonization of the opposition that infects today’s politics. Everything is political and political is personal. A disagreement about policy becomes an attack on identity. Washington is less immune from this national trend that we used to think we were.
The state’s population grew from 5.9 million to 7.7 million between 2000 and 2024. Within the raw growth numbers, the profile of the population was shifting.
Changes in the population profile track with shifts in party identification. For example, from 2000 to 2024, the proportion of state residents with a college degree grew from 27% to 41%. At the same time, party identification among the college educated shifted 28 percentage points toward the Democratic party, from D+1 to D+29.
Significantly, the distribution was uneven. In 2000, 15% of people in rural counties had a college degree, compared to 40% in King county – a 25% gap. By 2024, that gap had grown to 30% (25% to 55%). The Seattle gap is even more pronounced, where 70% of residents now hold a B.A. or higher degree.
This uneven growth in college-educated population contributed to both King County (30% of the state population) shifting 21 points to the Democrats and a widening partisan gap between urban and rural areas of the state.
Over the same period, residents age 18-50 (now 54% of the state population) shifted 25 points toward the Democrats. And the gender gap more than doubled as women (53% of the state’s voters) went from D+10 to D+23.
There’s more: A 55% majority of Washington residents were not born here, up from 45% in 2000. Non-white residents now comprise 40% of the state’s population, up from 27% in 2000. We don’t have party identification data on these two categories, but national trends are in the Democrats’ direction. And both of those categories tended to settle in urban areas.
The upshot is that the growing demographic categories are the most likely to be in the urban areas and most likely to be moving toward the Democratic party –adding to both the Democratic majority and intensifying the partisan/geographic divisions in the state.
So, we end up with three purple legislative districts. Voters in 46 of the 49 legislative districts have no representation in one or the other of the party caucuses in Olympia. King County has no voice in the Republican caucuses and Eastern Washington voters outside Spokane have no representation in the Democratic caucuses.
In times gone by, this separation: a) did not occur to the extent is does now; and b) would not have made as much difference as it does now. When both parties were bigger tents, there was enough ideological overlap that partisans from the same area could disagree on some issues but band together for the good of their corner of the state. With parties now polarized to a greater degree than at any time in living memory, this hardening of the political arteries makes cooperation “across the aisle” much more difficult.
Our politics are organized by interest and identity, but our government is organized by geographic districts. With party representation more sorted by geography, (not to mention gender, age, ethnicity and class), differences between these categories and regions intensify party differences in a mutually reinforcing spiral, making it ever more difficult to find “common ground.”
In addition, when one party is consistently winning with 57% of the votes, it is tempting to think that maybe finding “common ground” isn’t that important. Or that the common ground is already on their side of the fence.
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“Or that the common ground is already on their side of the fence.” Yeah.
But it isn’t necessarily ALL on their side of the fence. The pre-Reagan Washington state Republicans had their conservative streaks, but they worked for voters because they were honest and responsible, they cared about the future of our state and world and were willing to balance that against industry profits and the interests of the extremely wealthy.
One thing going for us in Washington is that our state legislators are part time legislators not full time. My take is that part time legislators are more likely to be there in Olympia as true representatives of the citizens and thus are less inclined to play the divisive politics that is needed to maintain jobs and status. If one’s only job is as a paid legislator and that is all you’ve known, one is going to be more reluctant to lead and more reluctant to take a correct but difficult vote. I’ll also argue that a part-time legislator keeps money out of politics because you can’t be a legislator, work a second job, and fund raise at the same time.
Having been an observer for a long time at what goes on in Olympia, I sense real camaraderie often between legislators from opposing parties. And while many bills might get passed without a single Republican vote, the norm is that amendments by Republicans that make a bill better or address a problem in the legislator’s district will be adopted.
The Transportation committees in the House & Senate are truly bi-partisan with chairs Barkis & Fey and Liias & King working across the aisle on compromise appropriations.
There is a downside to this in that it gives a lot of power to the governor’s office and directors of the state’s departments. Part time legislators just don’t have time to get into the weeds of difficult policy.
I do see the rural-urban divide when it comes to legislation. Urban King County really doesn’t comprehend how there are two economies in the state–the Seattle/Bellevue economy which is tech based and thus raises incomes across all families and a second economy which is more diverse and blue collar where incomes are less. For example, Sound Transit taxes really disproportionately impact Pierce and Snohomish county residents. Incomes are less which takes a bigger chunk out of their pockets and they don’t see the benefit of the taxes. Double-whammy.
In the end though, the Republicans are their own worst enemy here. Washington Republicans here should be running away from the national party agenda of a “Christian” nation and the anti-science/environmental stewardship. But they can’t help it and instead run into a full embrace characterized by Loren Culp and Joe Kent. Those standard bearers are a guarantee for a permanent minority in the state.
Increasingly, Washington state feels like a ‘tyranny of the majority’ which gives primacy to ideological aims at the expense the common good.
Oxford Reference describes ‘tyranny of the majority’ as “a fear expressed variously by Plato, Aristotle, Madison, Tocqueville, and J. S. Mill. If the majority rules, what is to stop it from expropriating the minority, or from tyrannizing it in other ways by enforcing the majority’s religion, language, or culture on the minority?”
One-party rule, i.e., one-party government, in our state has become the breeding ground for excesses and extremes. Voters can and should fix this dysfunctional asymmetry.