Wyoming
Wyoming Remains A Sea Of Political Red, But There’s A Little More Blue Creeping In
WAMSUTTER — Election data tools now make it possible to zoom in on specific communities and dissect the local electorate in an instant. Data shows Wyoming growing increasingly red, but at the same time, the numbers reveal small, expanding pockets of blue voters across the state.
Those blips of blue aren’t enough to be a trend or come close to challenging GOP dominance in the state that supported President Donald Trump more by percentage of voters than any other state — three times. But they also show the Democratic Party outside Teton and Albany counties isn’t dead in Wyoming, either.
The railroad and energy town of Wamsutter in southcentral Wyoming is not an expanding blue pocket of Democratic voters, but instead is an example of the state’s overwhelming support for Republicans.
“In Wamsutter, of the 105 registered voters, you have six Democrats and 85 Republicans,” said Paul Westcott, executive vice president of L2 Data, a voter research firm, noting that the remaining voters are unaffiliated.
Westcott recently led Cowboy State Daily on a visual tour of Wyoming voters, which are represented on L2 data maps as tiny red or blue squares.
As Westcott zoomed in on Wamsutter, the Democrats appeared as lonely blue outliers, mostly alone in a sea of red.
Between Jan. 1, 2020, and Oct. 1, 2024, L2 tracked 9,717 newcomers to Wyoming, and found 7,507 were registered Republicans, 933 were registered Democrats and 1,277 were listed as “other.”
L2 collects Wyoming voter data three times a year from the Wyoming Secretary of State, deleting those who died or moved out of state. This data set is then sold to a variety of election data services, which use a combination of opinion surveys, targeting software and artificial intelligence tools to profile voters and their political leanings.
Westcott said the offices of U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and U.S. Rep. Harriett Hageman both subscribe to L2 Data to assist with constituent outreach, not to contact voters or drive voter turnout, according to a Hageman spokesperson.
L2 Data allows political office holders to update mailing lists and get a sense of any shift in party affiliation.
“Communicating to my constituents is one of the primary ways I remain accountable to them as their representative,” Hageman said in a statement to Cowboy State Daily. “When I host events like town halls and tele-workshops, it is my goal to reach as many Wyomingites as possible in order to engage them in the conversation.”
Not accounted for in the L2 Data surveys is what, if any, impact from the surge of Democrats who switched parties to Republican to vote for former congresswoman Liz Cheney in the 2022 primary election. It’s not known if those blue voters eventually switching back to Democrat could have shown up as “new” blue voters in Wyoming.
Lander Got Bluer
During election season, L2 data allows campaign strategists to identify reliably red strongholds like Wamsutter, while also keeping an eye on where blue momentum appears to be building.
By Wyoming standards, an increase of a few dozen new Democrats is considered a boom.
“Lander has the largest percentage of new movers that are Dems among their rolls,” said Westcott. “There are 3,878 voters in Lander and in the last four years, 38 new Dems have moved into town. As a percentage, that is the largest in the state.”
L2 Data shows 76% of people moving into Wyoming in the last four years were Republican, while 9.8% or 970 of them were Democrats.
In addition to Lander, the other Wyoming cities and towns growing bluer include Torrington, Cheyenne, Cody and Sheridan.
Lander also led the state in the percentage of current Democrats who switched from Republican to Democrat in the last four years.
Patrick Lawson, chair of the Fremont County Democratic Party, said the high percentage of party switchers might be explained by a crossover that happened in 2022, when Wyoming Democrats switched parties to support Rep. Liz Cheney in the Republican primary, which she lost.
“Back when she was running, we lost a lot intentionally because the state party thought that it would be best to get support behind Cheney because they thought she could win,” said Lawson.
Today, Lawson is part of a “Turn Fremont Blue” campaign, which celebrated the election of Rep. Ivan Posey, R-Fort Washakie, in 2024 and continues to see the number of local Democratic supporters grow.
“Usually at our meetings we really had like 6 to 10 people,” said Lawson. “And the last couple meetings have been more like 30. So it’s tripled in size because there’s just a lot more people wanting to get involved and try and do something.”
The Fremont Democratic Party meetings alternate between Riverton and Lander every month. In Lander, they meet at the library. In Riverton, the gatherings happen in the old Sundowner restaurant, said Lawson, which is now called Mount Everest and serves Nepalese food.
These numbers are notable, showing growth for Democrats in Wyoming, but also shows that the Cowboy State at the same time is getting even more red politically. There may be a few more blue dots, but there also are a lot more red.
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Data shows Lander to be one of a few growing blue pockets for the Wyoming Democratic Party. (Fremont County Democrats) -
Data shows Lander to be one of a few growing blue pockets for the Wyoming Democratic Party. (Fremont County Democrats)
Goshen Going Blue?
In the last four years, according to L2 Data, 161 Democrats moved to Cheyenne, 85 to Casper, 45 to Sheridan and 17 to Torrington.
“In Goshen County, multiple new folks have moved in and reached out to us,” said Mandy Weaver, communications director with the Wyoming Democratic Party. “I was surprised by that a bit.”
Every Friday during the runup to the 2024 election, Goshen County Democrats rallied on the streets of Torrington, said Weaver.
“They’d stand out and there’s a decent sized group there in Torrington,” she said.
Another surprise growth spot for Democrats: Hot Springs County.
“There’s a really good, active group of Dems there,” said Weaver. “Now with everything that’s going on, people want to get involved. I’ve been working for the party for about two years now, and I’ve definitely seen an increase in involvement in that time.”
In January 2024, there were 23,191 registered Wyoming Democrats and 177,363 registered Wyoming Republicans, according to data from the Wyoming Secretary of State.
A year later, both numbers jumped. The number of registered Democrats increased to 34,845, while the number of Republicans surged to 227,881.
On March 1, the Secretary of State posted the latest registration numbers, and Democrats experienced a drop of a few thousand voters to 31,903, while the number of registered Republicans also dropped to 212,628.
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
CASPER, Wyo. — High school athletics in Wyoming could see some drastic changes in the coming years following legislative changes to the state’s education budget, the Wyoming High School Activities Association recently announced in a statement.
According to the WHSAA, Wyoming school districts are facing a projected $3.9 million shortfall in activities funding, forcing officials to consider significant cuts to high school sports and extracurricular programs.
The WHSAA shared details regarding a new “silo” funding model implemented by the Legislature, stating that the recalibrated block grant model reduced funding for student activities and extra-duty responsibilities from $46.3 million to $42.4 million, an approximately 8.4% decrease statewide.
WHSAA Commissioner Trevor Wilson said the restructuring also restricts district access to an additional $76.2 million in previously flexible funding.
“A significant portion of the [April 28 WHSAA Board of Directors] meeting was dedicated to discussing the projected funding shortfall,” Wilson wrote.
The WHSAA is weighing several strategies to address rising costs with fewer resources. Proposed changes include eliminating regional tournaments and reducing the number of teams qualifying for state events from eight to four; limiting wrestling to two classes and restricting track and field state participants to the top 16 marks; making cuts to soccer, indoor track and field, Nordic and Alpine skiing, swimming and diving, spring golf and tennis; and reducing in-person speech and debate events by half and centrally locating All-State Music events to minimize travel. The board also recommended increasing gate admission or implementing student participation fees to offset costs.
While the WHSAA release states that no plans have been finalized and the various changes are currently just possibilities, Natrona County School District 1 Board of Trustees member Mary Schmidt criticized the WHSAA’s handling of the news at Monday’s board meeting.
“I take some issues with this, [including] the sheer fact that we as Board of Trustees members have not talked about that at all,” Schmidt said. “It is not our intent and it has not been brought to us to cut our athletics or activities budget for the upcoming school year. … I take issue with them picking sports and getting the community upset and ginning them up to be upset that this is all going to be cut when that hasn’t been discussed.”
Later in the meeting, Superintendent Angela Hensley clarified that Natrona County School District 1’s athletics and activities budget saw a reduction of roughly $550,000 in the coming year’s budget, but said the local school district does not plan to cut any sports.
“Thank you, Trustee Schmidt, for saying this, because I think people are wondering — we are not planning to cut athletics and activities for next year,” Hensley said. “We do have to take a look at our entire budget as we have talked about, as we learn more about these new rules that come in.”
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Republished with permission from Wyoming News Now, a TV news outlet covering the Cheyenne and Casper areas.
Cheyenne City Council has introduced a temporary moratorium, or pause, on new data center construction.
“The end goal is to actually have regulations in place, to have really heavy public involvement with this with data centers,” said Councilman Mark Moody.
The proposed ordinance is not a permanent ban on data centers and would not affect data centers currently under construction.
Councilman Moody says this is a bipartisan issue.
“I just want to make this clear, I’m not against data centers. We do need them from a national security perspective,” he said.
He said there needs to be more public input and regulations regarding data centers in Cheyenne.
The ordinance would require city staff to study data center impacts such as electricity usage, electricity tariffs, closed-loop cooling systems, groundwater impacts, agricultural impacts, and land value.
Cheyenne LEADS, the economic development corporation for Cheyenne and Laramie County, reported in November 2025 that there are 12 operational data centers in Wyoming, five under construction and plans for 43 data centers announced across the state.
“There needs to be more public input with this, and also to see how many we can sustain here in this community, cause there are talks of 43, and then another day 70. How many can we sustain here?” said Councilman Moody.
The proposed moratorium will now go to the Public Services Committee on Monday, May 18 at noon in the Municipal Building.
Sheridan will play in the North Regional Tournament at Gillette, while the South Regional Tournament will be played at Rock Springs.
North Regional Tournament at Gillette:
Checking record vs. highest team in the quadrant not involved in the tie, Thunder Basin gets the #1 Northeast seed over Campbell County, because the Lady Bolts went 3-1 vs. Sheridan, whereas the Lady Camels went 2-2.
Friday, May 15th:
(#1 NE) Thunder Basin vs. (#4 NW) Jackson – 11am
(#2 NW) Natrona County vs. (#3 NE) Sheridan – 11am
(#2 NE) Campbell County vs. (#3 NW) Kelly Walsh – 1pm
(#1 NW) Cody vs. (#4 NE) Worland – 1pm
Semi-Finals:
Thunder Basin/Jackson winner vs. Natrona County/Sheridan winner – 3pm Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
Campbell County/Kelly Walsh winner vs. Cody/Worland winner – 5pm Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
Consolation Round:
Thunder Basin/Jackson loser vs. Natrona County/Sheridan loser – 3pm LOSER OUT!
Campbell County/Kelly Walsh loser vs. Cody/Worland loser – 5pm LOSER OUT!
Saturday, May 16th:
TBA vs. TBA – 10am LOSER OUT! Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
TBA vs. TBA – 10am LOSER OUT! Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
2 10am winners vs. each other – 1pm 3rd Place
TBA vs. TBA – 1pm 1st Place
South Regional Tournament at Rock Springs:
Friday, May 15th:
(#1 SW) Laramie vs. (#4 SE) Torrington – 11am
(#2 SE) Cheyenne East vs. (#3 SW) Green River – 11am
(#2 SW) Rock Springs vs. (#3 SE) Wheatland – 1pm
(#1 SE) Cheyenne Central vs. (#4 SW) Cheyenne South – 1pm
Semi-Finals:
Laramie/Torrington winner vs. Cheyenne East/Green River winner – 3pm Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
Rock Springs/Wheatland winner vs. Cheyenne Central/Cheyenne South winner – 5pm Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
Consolation Round:
Laramie/Torrington loser vs. Cheyenne East/Green River loser – 3pm LOSER OUT!
Rock Springs/Wheatland loser vs. Cheyenne Central/Cheyenne South loser – 5pm LOSER OUT!
Saturday, May 16th:
TBA vs. TBA – 10am LOSER OUT! Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
TBA vs. TBA – 10am LOSER OUT! Winner qualifies for the state tournament.
2 10am winners vs. each other – 1pm 3rd Place
TBA vs. TBA – 1pm 1st Place
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