SEATTLE — As we draw closer to the November presidential election, nearly all focus is on seven or so swing states that are expected to end up deciding the winner. And that means there’s hardly any attention paid to reliably blue Washington, which is about as far from a swing state as you can get.
The main reason Washington is so blue, of course, is the Seattle area, which is both heavily populated and overwhelmingly Democratic. But just how blue is it?
New survey data from market research firm Nielsen shows that in the Seattle metropolitan division, comprising King and Snohomish counties, 55.5% of adults were Democrats or leaned Democratic. That pencils out to a projected 1.4 million people out of the 2.5 million total population in the two counties.
Keep in mind, that’s the percentage of the entire population age 18 and up — it includes people who may not have any political-party affiliation and people who aren’t eligible to vote, such as people who are not U.S. citizens.
Only about 18% of adults in the two counties were Republican or leaned Republican, a projected 445,000. Around 11%, or 269,000, were Independent. The remaining 16%, or 409,000, had a different political affiliation (such as Green Party or Libertarian Party) or no affiliation.
Nielsen surveys hundreds of thousands of adults across the country about their political-party affiliation. The most recent data is based on surveys conducted from Jan. 2023 to Apr. 2024.
The Seattle area boomed during the 2010s, and as the population grew, the number of Democrats also increased sharply. At the same time, the number of Republicans declined.
Nielsen surveys conducted in the 2009 to 2010 period show 49% of adults in King and Snohomish counties — around 980,000 people — identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic. At that time, 26% of adults, or 521,000 people, identified as Republican or leaned Republican. There was a big jump in the number of Democrats after 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president. The number of Rebublicans has slowly declined.
As the nation has become increasingly polarized along political lines, there is some evidence that Americans are sorting themselves out — liberal people are moving to more liberal places and conservatives are moving to more conservative places. And that may be the reason Seattle and some other blue parts of the country have gotten significantly bluer in recent years.
Could the Seattle area continue to skew further to the left?
It’s certainly possible. Nielsen data shows there are a few places that are even more of a blue bubble than Seattle.
Among urban areas with at least one million adults, Seattle tied with Washington, D.C. for the sixth highest percentage of people who were Democrats or leaned Democratic.
The San Francisco metropolitan division, which includes San Francisco and San Mateo Counties, was No. 1 with about 70% of adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic. The Philadelphia area was a close second, at 68%, followed by the Oakland, California area, at 62%.
If you’re looking to relocate to a less blue area, consider the Fort Worth area. Among large urban areas, it had the lowest share of adults who were Democrats or leaned Democratic, at just under 30%. The Oklahoma City and Cincinnati areas, both at about 30%, would also be good options.
Between King and Snohomish counties, King was the bluer of the two. Around 57% of adults in King County were Democrats or leaned Democratic, while only 16% were Republican or leaned Republican. In Snohomish County, Democrats comprised half of the adult population, while about 23% were Republican or leaned Republican.
The Tacoma metropolitan division, which only includes Pierce County, was less blue than King or Snohomish. About 41% of the adult population identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic, and 25% were Republican or leaned Republican. About 16% were independent and 18% had a different political-party affiliation, or none.
On the other side of Washington, things look a lot less blue. In the Spokane metro area, Nielsen found Republicans outnumber Democrats, with 40% of adults identifying as Republican or leaning Republican, compared with 27% Democrats or leaning Democratic. About 14% are Independent and 20% have a different political affiliation, or none.
