Talk Elections

There are some exceptions, but the history of the results in the West can be summarized as follows

Before the Cold War: Pacific Coast voting like the North, Rocky Mountains and Plains voting like the South
During the Cold War: Republican
After the Cold War: Pacific Coast voting like the North, Rocky Mountains and Plains voting like the South, but with switched parties

Why?

The western mountain states were swing states. Republicans and democrats had a tug of war and both did their best to pandering by calling for development the area.

Woodrow Wilson won it due to his populist campaigns, The "populist" appeal of Woodrow Wilson towards the area diminished due to low approval ratings and republicans won it for most of the 20's, the 1920 election was due to wilson's unpopularity and in 1924 and 1928 the republicans won the West due to the then booming times as farmers in the Mountain states had great harvests and as a result, good livelihoods. Which turned into support for republicans.  After the Dust Bowl period, Democrats won it from the republicans from 1932-1948 with programs that would help struggling farmers. Some of the New Deal Laws made to appeal to this region was the Soil Conservation Act and a few other related acts that gave farmers, government support as long as they stopped over-planting.

In the Pacific states which was also a "swing region", Republicans were associated with development and big business which might of appealed to the booming cities. And was won over by the democrats after the Stock market crash as did most of the country, by programs that would provide relief to lots of unemployed and as mentioned, farmers.


The Great plains states from ND to Kansas had a lot of ethnic germans who voted for Willkie in 1940 due to fears that FDR would make the US join the war against Germany. While Willkie had the more explicit non-interventionist stance on the outbreak of WW2. This was the start of the decline of the Mountain West+Plains as a swing region as only once did all four of the states went for the Democrats(LBJ's 1964 landslide) while the rest it was for republicans.



Ike appealed to a lot of moderates and won over a lot of Mountain states.  Then as the Democratic party started to become more socially liberal, it was the start of the Urban/Rural+Suburban voting divergence between the two parties. Nixon coming from California might of helped him in both the mountain and pacific cost. While Gerald Ford might of been helped by Nixon's high margins back in the 1972 election and the diminishing gap with carter who went from 20% against Ford to just 2% by election day(also Carter was a southerner so while he appealed to southerners and that might of meant he was unable to swing Western states as well as he did with southern states compared to the Nixon landslide back in 1972).


Pacific Coast: Changing Demographics especially in California. And the rising urban white liberal vote(especially in Oregon and Washington). And helped by Bill Clinton's two campaigns causing suburbanites in the Pacific Coast to lose their dislike for the Democratic party. Helped make the Pacific Coast very democrat leaning.

Rocky Mountains/Plains: The evangelical voting base that reagan appealed to, also existed in the Mountain states. Plus the democrats did not gain as much into the suburbs. Rural areas becoming more strongly republican due to the voting pattern divergence due to shifts in strict social liberalism and social conservatism. So evangelicals+rural and suburbanite+Lack of changing demographics as in the Pacific Coast,  Equals a strongly GOP Rock Mountains+Plains region.


Oh i should mention that the recent shift in democrats toward environmentalism has upset a lot of people working or knows those who are working in natural resource extraction(oil, gas, coal, etc etc etc) And the Mountain west has a lot of people who work there.


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Also Utah and the mormon vote elsewhere in the country is strongly GOP.

http://utahvalley360.com/2015/07/13/top-10-states-mormons/


Interestingly enough, had it not been for mormons, Obama might of won Montana which is more competitive for democrats due to its Native american+irish+scandinavian populations.  Idaho which is almost 20% mormon, without that group there could of been a very distant possibility that Idaho goes Obama by a very small margin in 2008.