Yahoo! 2024 is behind us! Does 2025 have you moving to Idaho? Idaho is now over 2 million people… is that too many for you? How does that compare to other places? The good news; Idahoans are still as friendly and conservative in how they live their lives as ever before.
Is Idaho the Right Move for You?
Maybe 2025 is the year you move to Idaho? Apparently, the secret of how great Idaho is out because we’ve slipped just slightly over the 2 million mark for our population in 2024. Is that too many for you? How does Idaho’s population compare to other places? These are questions that came to mind as I checked out these two news reports.
The Idaho Press, via the Rexburg Standard Journal, tells us that our 2024 growth was 1.4% (30,497 people) but this growth was much less than our 2021 growth of 3% and 2022 growth of 2.1%. Interestingly, 80% of our growth was from migration to Idaho with the remainder growth from more births than deaths (net, 6195 people).
Channel 2 Idaho News added that the US population grew at 1%… compared to Idaho’s 1.5%. They reported, “Utah and Nevada were the only other western states that grew faster.”
Here are a couple of comments on the Channel 2 article. Tyrone responded to comments that people are “bringing their ‘right-wing extremist’ attitudes with them.” He rightly points out that Idaho is one of the few states remaining where the people are free (for the most part, I would add).
OliverCat, apparently an Idaho resident, complains that conservatives “could care less” about libs and that, “In fact, they are trying to run us out of the State.” Huevos rightly responds with the sentiment that “If you’re unhappy why do you stay?”
He continues, “The rest of the state isn’t going to change just to suit you.” And, you know what, that same thought applies to California or Oregon or Washington… the people and the government of those states are not going to change just to make the minority conservative population happy. So… what can those conservative people do? Move to Idaho!
But what about that 2 million people now in Idaho? Is that a lot? How does that compare to where you live now or where you might want to move to?
The entire population of Idaho… TIMES 4… is about what the SF Bay Area population is. You think we have traffic on Eagle Road in Meridian (which we do… HOWEVER)? Have you been on the 880 or the 580 in the East Bay? At the typical worst, Eagle Road will take an extra 5 or 10 minutes. I personally have been on these freeways in the East Bay when it literally takes hours to go a couple of miles.
Here are some more places for comparison. Remember, all of Idaho is a hair over 2 million… and the Treasure Valley (the five counties of the Boise metro area) is about 700,000. To compare:
Sacramento County, California: about 1.6 million.
Los Angeles metro area: about 12.6 million.
Seattle metro area: about 3.5 million.
Portland metro area: about 2.2 million.
And for some more comparisons… let’s get away from the west coast and look at some popular states that people have been moving to:
Florida: about 23.4 million.
Texas: about 31.2 million.
Tennessee: about 7.2 million.
Utah: about 3.5 million.
Okay, let’s bring it back home. The whole entire state of Idaho is just at 2 million.
Boise: about 235,216.
Meridian: about 142,830.
Nampa: about 118,587.
Emmett: about 8,492.
Treasure Valley Dave's Thoughts
Yes, Idaho has more people in it that before… but so does just about every other state that hasn’t chased off good folks with their Marxist takeover. Yes we have 2 million souls here now… but compare that to other states; Florida has TWELVE TIMES our population… and Texas has us beat by SIXTEEN TIMES. Some metro areas have Idaho beat by many times over as well.
If you want the excitement of crime, homelessness, gridlock traffic and just filth… Idaho just isn’t the place for you. If you want some of the “big city” feel, Boise is great! It’s easy to park, to walk around safely, to find fun things to do and all without panhandlers and homeless anywhere around. I like that (was there yesterday for lunch!) but I prefer living in a smaller place, Nampa. I wanted a town that was big enough to have everything real handy and small enough not to have big-city problems. You might like Boise or Nampa or even something smaller… and all of these lifestyles are just waiting for YOU!
HAPPY NEW YEAR and may 2025 be full of blessings for you and yours. If one of those blessings is moving to the Treasure Valley, Mareen and I really look forward to helping you every way we can. Just give us a call, text or email and let’s talk about it!
