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.
Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.
Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming’s elusive snakes in their native habitats.
Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected.
Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.
These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.
“I personally don’t feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the Wyoming Herpetological Society. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”
Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.
Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.
“That’s the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”
He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.
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The Great Basin gopher snake is a non-venomous snake found primarily in the western United States and parts of southwestern Canada. You can find these snakes in a wide range of habitats; grasslands, woodlands, and deserts. -
The plains hognose snake can be mistaken for a rattlesnake but is harmless to humans. -
The Eastern yellow-bellied racer is incredibly fast, alert, and primarily hunts during the day using their sharp eyesight. Harmless to humans but feisty and will bite and musky-spray if cornered or handled. -
The smooth green snake is completely non-venomous, quite secretive and rarely seen. The Wyoming Natural Diversity Database said they are mostly found in localized pockets within southeast and south-central Wyoming and the Black Hills area. Their habitat are moist meadows, marshes, stream edges, open woods since they can camouflage in lush vegetation. This snake feeds almost exclusively on insects and spiders such as crickets, grasshoppers and caterpillars.
Elusive, Not Rare
While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.
According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.
“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don’t know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They’re just not studied and have a limited habitat.”
This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.
In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.
“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there’s the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”
People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.
“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”
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The northern rubber boa is found in the northwest corner of state such as Star Valley and east into the Bighorn Mountains. They are a small, docile, non-venomous constrictors that are rarely seen since they are excellent burrowers and climbers. The Wyoming Game and Fish consider them vulnerable/secretive and track sightings to help build their statewide database. -
The pale milk snake is not a venomous coral snake and is found in the Bighorn Basin, eastern plans and southeastern corner of Wyoming. They are rare to see because they spend their life hiding under rocks, within rocky outcrops, badland scarps, ponderosa pines, and shortgrass prairies according to the University of Wyoming. Since they are so secretive, spotting one in the wild is a rare treat and Wyoming Game and Fish is asking the public to report any sightings for their database. -
The plains black-headed snake is completely harmless because it’s mouth is too small to pierce human skin and its mild venom is for small invertebrates. Due to its secretive nature, it is rare to see one but they are known to be in southeastern Wyoming in the Platte and Carbon Counties. They are very small, secretive, burrowing snakes that spend almost all of their lives underground or hidden beneath rocks and logs, typically only surfacing at night. -
The bull snake or gopher snake is completely non-venomous but does not want you to know that. When threatened, they put on a dramatic show according to the National Park Service. The bullsnake will puff up their bodies, hiss loudly, flatten their head into a triangle and vibrate their tails in dry bush to mimic a rattlesnake. (Matt Rasmussen)
A New Snake & Frog Society
Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don’t get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard.
“We’re a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.
This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app iNaturalist.
“Even if you don’t know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That’s really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”
He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.
Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
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