Idaho 2020 Election Results

Idaho held its general election on November 3, 2020, deciding 105 legislative seats. No chamber changed party control.

Highlights

• Republicans took 2 House seats from Democrats to widen their two-thirds supermajority there, and the Senate's two-thirds Republican majority held at the same strength.
• Both gains came in districts that Democrats had won in 2018. In West Boise's House District 15, which elects two House members to separate seats, Codi Galloway (R) returned Seat B to GOP control, unseating Jake Ellis (D) by about 5 points, while Steve Berch (D) held Seat A by about 3. In Pocatello's House District 29, Dustin Manwaring (R), who had held the seat from 2016 to 2018, defeated Chris Abernathy (D) by about 8 points. The state party chairman credited outreach to newly arrived Idahoans who had registered as Republicans in the states they left.
• The Senate's most closely watched seats stayed put. In Senate District 5, David Nelson (D), the only Democratic lawmaker in North Idaho (north of the Time Zone Bridge), held off Dan Foreman (R), the senator he unseated in 2018, by about 220 votes. In Senate District 15, Fred Martin (R), Boise's last Republican senator, turned a six-vote 2018 win into a margin of about 1,350 votes over Rick Just (D).
• Nelson's Senate District 5 race was the only one beyond the flips to finish inside two points, and 42 legislative seats had only one candidate on the ballot.
• Voters approved the only statewide measure, HJR 4, which writes into the constitution that Idaho has exactly 35 legislative districts, replacing the allowed range of 30 to 35.

Legislature

• House (70 seats): 14 D, 56 R before the election, 12 D, 58 R after; control stayed with Republicans.
• Senate (35 seats): 7 D, 28 R before the election, 7 D, 28 R after; control stayed with Republicans.

Legislative races

Ballot measures