Oklahoma: South Meets Plains

Oklahoma's unique geographic position at the crossroads of the American South and the Great Plains makes for a singularly unfriendly environment for Democrats.

At baseline, Oklahoma is one of the top five most Republican states in the nation, and has been for much of the 21st century. It voted overwhelmingly for Trump by over two-thirds of the vote in the last election, and many view the state as one of the reddest in the nation. 

But what's interesting about Oklahoma is that looking at its demographics, it's kind of a mix between the American South and Great Plains states. 

It shares characteristics of the South in much of its Southeastern corner of the state, where a lot of its residents are rural white voters who are religiously devout, and extremely socially conservative. 

And, in much of its Western half of the state, it shares a lot of characteristics with the Great Plains states, also overwhelmingly rural, but dominated by a more libertarian breed of voter, many of whom are relatively less socially conservative, but still tend to back Republicans driven by their dislike of Democrats' urban-based policies, and due to ancestral ties with the party. 

Oklahoma Recent Political History / Conservative Dominance

Oklahoma hasn’t voted Democrat in a presidential election since 1964, so for ~60 years. Other Southern states like Alabama and Mississippi that are also Republican strongholds still voted for Democratic presidents into the 1970’s and voted for Democratic senators and governors into the 2000’s.

Oklahoma's shift towards the GOP in the late 20th century was much quicker and also more universal than many other states in the South. Republicans have held both Oklahoma Senate seats for the past 30 years and no Democrat represents any of the state’s five U.S. House districts. By 2023, the number of Oklahomans registered to vote as Democrats dropped to a little more than 650,000 (out of ~2.2 million total registered voters in the state¹) - half the number from just 20 years prior. 

In contrast, in states like Arkansas or Georgia, Democrats held Senate seats and governors’ offices well into the 21st century, and Democratic state parties were able to sustain themselves and retain some degree of political relevance throughout the late 20th century and even into the early 21st.

But by the 1990s, Democrats in Oklahoma were pretty much completely wiped out as a political force.

Oklahoma Demographic Context

And a lot of these disparities can be explained by the fact that Oklahoma is demographically very different than many Southern states - and actually shares a lot of DNA with the rest of the Great Plains.

Rural and White Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s rural areas are massive. The entire western half of the state, from the Panhandle towards the areas just west of Oklahoma City, is comprised of many very sparsely populated rural counties that add up to a substantial portion of the electorate - around 37% as of 2022.

And since the 2000 election, Democrats have not won a single county in the state of Oklahoma, even in very sparsely populated rural counties.

Now, if you just look at modern election results in other rural, Southern states like Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana, what you'll see is that, while their county-level maps are covered in a sea of red, there are spots of dark blue. These spots of blue are often counties that have significant populations of Black voters, who tend to vote for Democrats by extremely large margins. Look at Mississippi, for example, and you'll see that many of the counties along the western edge of the state, along the Mississippi Delta, are heavily blue, sometimes supporting Democrats by upwards of 80 points.

But this same Black presence simply does not exist in Oklahoma. On a state-wide basis, Oklahoma’s Black population stood at ~7% in 2022². In rural Oklahoma, only ~3.5% of the state’s rural population is Black — a significantly smaller proportion than in other Southern states like Alabama, where 21% of the rural population is Black, Mississippi (39%), or Georgia (25.8%), and South Carolina (36.4%). There is simply no rural enclave with a significant proportion of Black voters that exists in Oklahoma to any extent, which really puts Democrats in an challenging position in the state, even more so than they are in states like Mississippi.

And this overwhelming white-ness is a great starting point for looking at how Oklahoma differs from other Southern states, and its’ shared characteristics with the Mountain West.

In Oklahoma, white, non-Hispanic Americans made up around 78% of the electorate in 2020, similar to states like Indiana (76.74% white), Iowa (84.27% white), Kansas ( Ohio (77.85% white). Nebraska (76.15% white) in 2022.

In contrast, the proportion of white, non-Hispanic Americans in other Southern states is much lower overall, like Mississippi (56.96% white), Alabama (63.62% white), or Louisiana (56% white).

White & Evangelical Oklahoma

Taking a closer look at the complexion of Oklahoma’s white electorate, religion adds a further twist:

Oklahoma ranks among the highest evangelical Christian populations in the nation. In 2022, over 44% of adult Oklahomans identify as evangelical according to Pew Research, compared to 14% of Americans who identify as evangelical nationally³.

While there is some diversity in this group — nationally, evangelicals tend to be overwhelmingly white with only 6% of Black Christians identifying as evangelical. And in Oklahoma, only 3% of Black Christians identify as evangelical as of 2014⁴.

Overall, Oklahoma’s evangelical share is much more closely aligned to Southern states like Kentucky (49% evangelical), Tennessee (52%) and Alabama (49%) than it is in Mountain West or Great Plains states like Kansas (31%), Montana (28%) and Nebraska (25%).

This somewhat unique combination of white-dominance, rural, and significant evangelical presence is what gives Oklahoma it’s unique character.

And this mix - it’s reflected in electoral outcomes in the state.

Electoral Outcomes

Let’s look closer at Oklahoma’s white vote.

In 2020, you'll notice that Oklahomans indeed voted very conservatively, much more so than the national average. Oklahomans voted in 2020 for Trump by around a 43-point margin, 71 to 28 - a substantially wider margin than the nationwide average, where white voters split 57 to 43.

But this delta is noticeably narrower than in many other Southern states like Mississippi or Alabama, where in 2020 many of the white voters in the states gave Trump as much as 82% of its total vote.

Now, the difference between 70 and 80% points may seem small, but it is very significant.

What we are seeing in Oklahoma electoral outcomes is in part how a mix of these two types of white voters is coming into play. Oklahoma's white population, being a mix of this rural Great Plains, Mountain West population whose voters are very ideologically conservative - but not quite as extreme as evangelicals, and Southern evangelical white ultra-conservative population, mostly located in the eastern half of the state, helps showcase how Oklahoma does vote like a mix of the two regions of the United States.

Oklahoma’s Native American Voter Base

Oklahoma’s Native American population also shapes the unique political character of the state. Oklahoma’s Native American voters represent nearly 10% percent of population - among the highest in the entire nation.

But while Native American across the nation tend to vote Democratic, in Oklahoma, they’re overwhelmingly Republican.

Nationally, around 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters supported the Democratic nominee Joe Biden - with some precincts delivering over 97% of their votes to Biden in 2020⁵.

In contrast, Native Americans in Oklahoma are among the most conservative voters in the state. Just to illustrate how idiosyncratic Native voters in Oklahoma are compared to Native American voters nationally, in 2020 Donald Trump won the two counties encompassing the Cherokee Nation (one of the largest Native tribes in Oklahoma), by massive margins. Trump won Adair County, one of the two, by an extremely large 60 percentage points, capturing nearly 80% of the county's total vote. In Cherokee County (which shares the name with the tribe), he won 63% of its total vote, defeating Joe Biden by around 29 percentage points. In addition, Trump won the counties encompassed by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Seminole, Osage, and Pawnee reservations by overwhelming margins.

On the surface, the sizable Native American population in Oklahoma might seem to present an opportunity for future Democratic gains in the state. But the truth is: it’s more complicated than that.

Many Native Americans in Oklahoma have been Republican for generations. Republicans have made concerted and long-term efforts to develop strong Native American ties through highly collaborative cultural, economic and social integration policies. And the success of these initiatives is reflected in the strong solidified support of the state's Native American communities of the GOP.

Oklahoma Outlook

This all raises the question of whether there's a future for Democrats in Oklahoma.

While any prediction is speculative at best, there could be a glimmer of hope of Democrats at least improving their position in the state. This would not only involve courting Native American voters, but really squeezing any margin they can out of their base in cities like Tulsa and Oklahoma City and squeezing any margin they can out of the state’s relatively small proportion of Hispanic and Black voters which comprise ~10% of the voter base in the state.

Urban and Suburban Oklahoma

Oklahoma doesn’t have very many urban metropolises. It has Tulsa and Oklahoma City, but those cities are among the most conservative cities in the nation, often supporting Republican candidates for municipal, state and even federal seats. Oklahoma City voted in Republican David Holt for mayor in 2022 and in 2020, Donald Trump won Oklahoma County, where Oklahoma City resides, albeit by just 1.1 percentage points.

Moreover, most of Oklahoma's suburbs are overwhelmingly Republican. Looking at the 2020 county data, knowing Oklahoma County has a population of around 800,000 and encompasses all of Oklahoma City, which has a population of 680,000, you can reasonably infer that Joe Biden won Oklahoma City proper by a small, maybe single-digit margin, while losing the surrounding suburbs to Donald Trump, resulting in a Trump victory in the county as a whole.

But these municipalities may be the crux to Democrats’ future in the state.

As of 2023, 41% of all Democrats lived in either Oklahoma or Tulsa counties, home to the state’s two largest cities, compared to 2000, when only 25% (or one out of every four) of registered Democrats lived in either of these counties according to voter registration data⁶.

And while Oklahoma as a whole is one of the slowest growing states in the nation, with a 1% growth overall — Oklahoma City saw a 17.4% increase in population from 2010 to 2020⁷, and it was one of only 14 cities that gained more than 100,000 residents in that time period.⁸ Since 2010, the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metros accounted for nearly 70% of net population gains for the entire state. Without those two metros, the rest of the state experienced a net population loss of 43,000⁹ and many counties concentrated in the Western rural portion of the state lost population in the same time period.

So how is this urban growth playing out down-ballot in the state?

Democrat Kendra Horn's surprise 2018 victory in Oklahoma's 5th District, was emblematic of a potential leftward shift in Oklahoma City and its long-time conservative suburbs driven by this population growth and influx of Democrat-leaning moderate voters.

Horn’s victory was one of the most stunning upsets of the cycle; the 5th district is the only district in Oklahoma that’s remotely competitive. Horn ultimately lost her seat in 2020 like a lot of freshman Democrats in a very polarized election year, and it would be hard for any Democrat to over-perform the presidential nominee by more than 3 or 4 points, let alone having to do so by 7 or 8 points. And in 2022 — when the Democrats didn’t seriously compete for the district after its lines had shifted substantially — it voted for Trump by a much larger margin. But if the city continues its trajectory, then the 5th district could be competitive again. But that’s likely a years- or decades-long process.

Erosion in Native American Voter Support

It's also possible that continued Republican controversy could damage goodwill with significant constituents like Native American voters in Oklahoma.

We actually saw this sort of occur in 2022 when Governor Kevin Stitt turned in a significant underperformance of 18% points, compared to Donald Trump’s 2020 margin. Stitt defeated his Democratic opponent by less than 15 points in a state that Republicans usually win by over 30 points.

In that race, Stitt ran against a former Republican head of the department of public education in the state who switched to the Democratic party, Joy Hofmeister. What was so interesting is that Hofmeister over-performed by a pretty significant margin, in a year that was substantially more Republican than in 2020 or in 2018.

As backstory to this race: in the months and years leading up to his reelection, Kevin Stitt sparked a lot of high-profile feuds with numerous Native American tribes throughout the state… tribes that often play extremely influential roles in state politics. Many states came out forcefully against a second term for Kevin Stitt (who, by the way, is a Cherokee citizen himself) after he spent nearly all of his first four years in office publicly antagonizing many of the largest tribes in the state. These efforts included attempting to renegotiate the state's gambling compact with the tribes, which has always been an integral source of economic revenue for these tribes.

In addition, Stitt’s administration attempted to overturn a favorable U.S. Supreme Court ruling for tribal sovereignty and also terminated various hunting and fishing compacts that had been previously written between the state and the tribes.

Stitt has also been bogged down by other damaging scandals, the most notable being the improper spending of coronavirus relief funds intended for education, which really further damaged his reputation, not only among Native American tribes but also among more moderate voters who typically supported Republicans on issues surrounding education.

Education Policy

In another surprise outcome, Democratic nominee, Jena Nelson, a middle school teacher running for the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction, was the best-performing Democrat in Oklahoma that year, surpassing Joy Hoffmeister’s strong performing. Nelson came within 13 points of beating the Republican nominee Ryan Walters. The race highlighted Nelson’s controversial positions on education amidst the national debate on critical race theory, culture wars, book banning helped show that even in a deeply entrenched conservative state like Oklahoma, political missteps can erode significant support¹⁰.

Continued Challenges for Democrats

So, I've presented some sources for potential optimism for Democrats in Oklahoma and mentioned that despite poor past circumstances with important demographics like suburban voters or Native American voters, there is some evidence showing that the party may actually be able to pick up support with these key demographics, owing primarily to Republicans' shift to the extreme right, which has damaged their relationship with a lot of these more mainline voters.

But if this leads you to think that Democrats have any shot of winning the state in the foreseeable future, unfortunately, I have to sort of pour water on those hopes.

Because underlying all of this action and movement in the state is an absolutely overwhelming and universally Republican base that is responsible for covering the state in a sea of red and is also responsible for making the state among the most Republican in the nation.

Given current political dynamics, there is simply too much of a rural demographic for Democrats to have any chance of winning the state in the foreseeable future, especially given that Democrats have really deprioritized winning back rural voters, which actually used to comprise a very significant chunk of their coalition, even as recently as the late 1900s when Bill Clinton won a substantial amount of rural America, including in the state of Oklahoma.

But in the 21st century we’ve seen Democrats support among rural voters fall precipitously across the nation. And nowadays, rural voters consistently back Republicans by overwhelming margins.

In 2020, rural voters, who comprised 37% of Oklahoma's total voting population, backed Donald Trump by a 78 to 21 margin, or a margin of 57 percentage points, which is absolutely insane.

Small-town voters, who made up 20% of the population in Oklahoma in 2020, also supported Trump by an overwhelming margin, with 73% of small-town voters backing Trump compared to a measly 25% for Joe Biden - again an eye-popping 48% margin of victory.

This was also reflected in how the white vote was split between the two candidates. Many Oklahoman white voters, who made up 78% of the voting population in 2020, backed Trump by a 43-point margin, 71 to 28, which was substantially higher than his performance among whites nationally as a whole, when he won the demographic by 57 to 43%.

Democrats have a very large problem with white voters, which, while maybe less consequential as a whole due to America's diversification, is really a dealbreaker in the state of Oklahoma. While Oklahoma is growing and diversifying, given the pace and complexion of this growth, it will likely remain a very white dominant state for a very long time, in the mold of many Mountain West states we’ve discussed.

So, Oklahoma combines that extreme whiteness of the Mountain West with the extreme conservatism of a lot of Evangelical Christian white voters in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, who regularly back Republicans by 80, even 90 points. And because this Evangelical-identifying population comprises such a substantial amount of Oklahoma's white population, Democrats arguably face even greater challenges in Oklahoma than it does in states like Montana or other Great Plains states that don't have this strong Evangelical white population.

Oklahoma, unfortunately, really combines the most unfavorable aspects of the Mountain West and the Deep South for Democrats, which make it sort of a worst-of-both-worlds situation for the party.

Close Out: Looking Ahead

I just gave a lot of Democratic supporters a pretty unfortunate wake-up call, but you know, this is just because it is unlikely they'll win this is a hole for the foreseeable future.

But this does not mean that they cannot find opportunities in Oklahoma because remember, the presidency is by far not the only prize on the board. There are, of course, Senate seats, House seats, state legislative seats, and governorships, which are all extremely important not just for the state but with important implications for the entire nation.

So, looking at it from this lens, I'd say that Democrats have a few great opportunities.

For one, if Democrats begin contesting more state legislative districts, they will be able to slowly build up their party's presence in both state legislative houses, which right now are arguably at their lowest point.

In the state house, Democrats only control 20 seats to Republicans' 81, and in the state senate, Democrats hold eight seats to Republicans' 40.

This is a far cry from only a couple of decades ago when Democrats actually held majorities in one or both chambers, which just goes to show how times have quickly changed within the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In 2022, only 58 Democrats filed to run for legislative seats in either house compared to Republicans' 182, which means that Democrats left an extraordinary amount of seats uncontested.

In fact, in 2022, 70% of Oklahoma state legislative elections were left uncontested. This sort of inactivity from the state Democratic party is very suboptimal for progress or improvement and, as elementary as it may sound, it is still a very significant point in a very significant area for improvement for the state Democratic party.

Now, on the federal level, Democrats have, of course, an opportunity in Oklahoma's 5th congressional district. Earlier, I mentioned how Democrat Kendra Horn won in a stunning, arguably the most surprising result of 2018, a year filled with stunners. Unfortunately for Democrats, Horn was unable to hold on to the district for long; two years later, in 2020, while Trump carried the district by 5.6 percentage points, Horn lost reelection to Republican challenger Stephanie Bice by 4.2 percentage points.

During the 2021 redistricting cycle, Oklahoma's 5th District was gerrymandered to become a heavily Republican district, so much that Stephanie Bice won reelection by 22%. Perhaps in the future, Democrats can once again contest the fifth district, even though its current form is clearly Republican due to Oklahoma City and its surrounding suburbs' shift to the left, which looks to continue in future years.

Perhaps Democrats can once again win the fifth district and establish a political foothold in the state.

Looking to 2024, it is virtually guaranteed that Trump will win Oklahoma, and he will do so by an astounding margin. Trump will likely improve on his 2020 margin in the state where he won by 33 percentage points because rural voters are likely to turn out in spades for Trump, just as they were in 2020 and 2016.

The key difference is that Joe Biden has also arguably weakened himself as a candidate, especially among the key suburban demographic, which will really decide whether Donald Trump manages to improve or decline in his performance this year. Oklahoma City's suburbs and Tulsa's suburbs, which were already not the most liberal places despite their leftward shifts, may reject Biden this time around, as we saw in suburban areas in Northern Virginia and in Long Island in the state of New York.

1. https://www.koamnewsnow.com/lifestyle/oklahoma-releases-voter-registration-statistics/article_864563a0-976d-11ed-b711-ebabd4a39959.html

2. In 2022, the Black population in Oklahoma stood at 7%, compared to 26% in Alabama, 31% in Louisiana and 37% in Mississippi.

3. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014047885/americas-white-christian-plurality-has-stopped-shrinking-a-new-study-finds

4. https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/state/oklahoma/religious-tradition/evangelical-protestant/

5. Pre-election voter surveys by Indian Country Today found 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters supporting Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In particular, the Navajo Reservation, which spans a large quadrant of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, delivered up to 97% of their votes per precinct to Biden, while overall support for Biden was between 60 and 90% on the Reservation. Biden also posted large turnout among Havasupai, Hopi, and Tohono O'odham peoples, delivering a large win in New Mexico and flipping Arizona.

Nationwide, Native Americans voted very strongly for Joe Biden. Pre-election polling by Indian Country Today actually found that nearly 70% of American Indians were planning to support Democratic nominee Joe Biden, suggesting that Biden won around 2/3 of the Native Americans both likely in the Navajo Nation reservation in the neighboring state of Arizona. Some precincts actually delivered over 97% of their votes to Joe Biden, but this was obviously very different from Oklahoma.

6. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2023/07/06/oklahoma-legislature-democrats-rebuilding-democratic-party/70250037007/

7. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/05/25/okc-americas-20th-largest-city-one-of-fastest-growing-big-cities/70258029007/

between the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, Oklahoma City was one of 14 American cities that added more than 100,000 people.

https://www.abetterlifeokc.com/featured/oklahoma-city-s-population-has-grown-twice-as-fast-as-the-national-average/?back=misconceptions

8. https://www.velocityokc.com/blog/policy/oklahoma-city-makes-sizable-gains-in-2020-census-will-benefit-from-growth/

9. https://www.velocityokc.com/blog/policy/oklahoma-city-makes-sizable-gains-in-2020-census-will-benefit-from-growth/

10. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2023/06/22/ryan-walters-oklahoma-state-board-of-education-meeting-political-turmoil/70345624007/

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2023/06/22/ryan-walters-oklahoma-state-board-of-education-meeting-political-turmoil/70345624007/