Marion County is Oregon’s 5th most populous, behind only the biggest counties in the Portland and Eugene metro areas. A funny-shaped county in the middle of the Willamette Valley, Marion contains most of the state capital city of Salem, as well as the capitol itself. Salem is the biggest city and has a large portion of the county’s population, and both it and the other main cities are on the I-5 corridor. Woodburn is the closest main city to the Portland area, while Keizer is just north of Salem, adjacent to it. With that the bulk of the county’s population lives in the western half of the county’s territory, which is generally either urban or agrarian. The east, with a highway stretching through the Santiam Pass, through the mountains and beyond into Central Oregon, is dotted with small communities on the way. The land becomes less and less intensely used for agriculture as one heads east and becomes more hilly, then mountainous and forested. At that point it is part of a vast wilderness.
Marion County touches on the fringe of the Portland area in the north, has most of Salem in the west, nears Albany to the south, and has the entry to the Santiam Pass over the Cascade mountains
Hop production as here, near Brooks, north of Salem, is common
Marion County is heavily rural. Its economy is one of the biggest agricultural producers in the state. About 215,000 of Marion's 315,000 live in Salem, Keizer, and Woodburn proper, and an additional 35-40,000 in unincorporated suburban pockets in eastern Salem. The remainder lives in the cities of less than 10,000 or rural areas. While about 40% of the county’s voters live in Salem, 28-31% live in rural and unincorporated areas, and some of the remainder are in small towns that have a rustic culture and way of life. Even the larger cities like Woodburn and even Salem have a small town feel.
typical downtown Salem
Despite being one of Oregon’s largest cities, Salem lacks a cosmopolitan feel. Though it has a significant Hispanic/Latino population, which is largely confined to the north and east of the city, that is about the extent of its diversity. The Hispanic/Latino community has grown in an environment where farm workers are in high demand, and the result is that while many have been here long and are citizens, many are not. Despite having several small colleges it also does not feel like a college town. It is not surprising that Salem is not a very liberal or strongly Democratic city. In fact, none of the communities in Marion County are.
The communities that tend to be more Democratic tend to be more Hispanic/Latino as well. That includes Salem, Hubbard, Gervais, and Woodburn, though Hubbard leans a bit Republican. Gervais and Woodburn are majority Hispanic/Latino, and are in a state house district that is narrowly Hispanic/Latino majority, which also contains parts of Salem. Keizer and the more rural communities, with perhaps one exception, tend to be whiter and are more strongly Republican.
North Marion has many French place names which came from early French Canadian settlers
Mount Angel Abbey and Seminary
An area of northern Marion County is coincidentally called North Marion, believe it or not. This region is also called French Prairie after some of the early settlers from Canada, who brought with them their Catholic religion, as well as names like Gervais and St. Paul. Marion County is part of what some have called Oregon’s bible belt, as many of its residents are quite religious and culturally conservative. The Christian groups are fairly diverse, including Mormons, Mennonites, and Russian Old Believers. The small town of Mt. Angel is the site of Mount Angel Abbey.
Place Name |
2010 Population |
% Hispanic/Latino |
Population of Marion County and its incorporated Cities
Marion County |
315,335 |
24.3% |
Salem |
154,637* |
20.3% |
Keizer |
36,478 |
18.3% |
Woodburn |
24,080 |
58.9% |
Silverton |
9,222 |
12.7% |
Stayton |
7,644 |
14.3% |
Aumsville |
3,584 |
14.4% |
Mt Angel |
3,286 |
26.1% |
Hubbard |
3,173 |
36.3% |
Jefferson |
3,098 |
19.2% |
sublimity |
2,681 |
3.1% |
Gervais |
2,464 |
67.1% |
Mill City* |
1,855* |
9.2% |
Turner |
1,854 |
7.3% |
Donald |
979 |
14.6% |
Aurora |
918 |
10.9% |
Gates |
471* |
4.5% |
St Paul |
421 |
14.7% |
Scotts Mills |
357 |
2.2% |
Detroit |
202 |
3% |
Idanha |
134* |
5.2% |
*Salem is partially in Polk County, but the bulk of the population is in Marion County. The cities of Gates, Idanha, and Mill City are all partially in Linn County. The election results and performance below are only for the Marion County portions of those cities.
Marion County as a whole in the long term does not have a trend towards Democrats, but Democrats have still done better in the county than in the past. Let me explain.
National Democrats have only won Marion County in 1964, 1996, and 2008
Even as Democrats have increased our numbers there, and pulled off a rare win in the presidential race of 2008, Republicans have generally outpaced us still. Little progress relative to them has been made in actual election results. Marion County is persistently several points more Republican than the nation as a whole since 1992.
Marion County turned more Republican in the 1990s and hasn’t gone back
Given Oregon has trended Democratic relative to the rest of the country over the past few decades, that puts Marion County even further to the right of the state.
If anything Marion County has become more Republican compared to the rest of the state
Aside from a few outliers in the 80s and 90s (two of which were Jim Hill (D-Salem) winning Treasurer races, Marion County voting for a local candidate), Marion County has been consistently less Democratic than the rest of the state. During the 1990s there may even have been an upward trend for statewide Democrats, but since 2000 Democrats appear to have done progressively worse in the county.
Willamette University, across the street from the state capitol in Salem
Drilling further down to how localities in Marion County vote is the next step. Since it is the biggest city and casts roughly 40% of the vote in the county, let’s start with Salem.
Salem appears to actually have trended Democratic while Marion County has trended Republican since 1990. While Salem has voted Democratic in every gubernatorial election since 1990, 1990’s election had the smallest margin. Like the state as a whole, Salem hasn’t voted Republican for Senate since Gordon Smith’s 2002 re-election, and since 1990 has gone from voting Republican nearly 60-40% to about 60-40% Democratic in Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley’s most recent re-elections in 2016 and 2014. Overall the trend has been from more Republican than the state in 1990 and 1992 to being much closer to the state. In fact in presidential results the city has been within 0.3 points of the statewide results in the last four elections.
Salem’s own trend seems like it may contrast with that of the county as a whole
Another rustic scene near Brooks, north of Salem
While Salem has voted Democratic for president in every election in this period, Barack Obama’s performance in 2008 and Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 were the strongest victories for Democrats, with nearly 59% of the two party vote in 2008 and 57% in 2016. The most Democratic part of Salem is unsurprisingly (as it tends to be the case in many cities) the downtown/central areas of Salem, which voted about 67-33% for Clinton in 2016, 70-30% for Jeff Merkley in 2014, and nearly 63-37% for John Kitzhaber in 2014. It also voted more than 63-37% for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary compared to closer to 56-44% for Sanders citywide.
Probably the most Republican part of Salem is South Salem, which is also is the biggest part of Salem’s electorate (over 60% of votes cast in Salem in 2012 were in precincts I include in South Salem). Barack Obama won South Salem by less than 54-46% in 2012, though Hillary Clinton pushed that t 55-45% in 2016, and Jeff Merkley won it by better than 57-43% in 2014, but John Kitzhaber narrowly lost it by about 49.6-50.4% in 2014. In 2016 South Salem, which is whiter and tends to be wealthier than the rest of the city, voted about 53-47% for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, the narrowest margin in Salem.
Detroit Lake and the forested hills around it
More working class and heavily Hispanic North and east Salem are somewhere in between, generally. East Salem voted about a point more for Obama than South Salem in 2012, while he carried North Salem better than 57-43%. In 2014 Jeff Merkley did about a point better in east Salem than South Salem, but carried North Salem by about 61-39%, while John Kitzhaber lost the former by 49-51% and won the latter by about 5 points. Sanders won North and east Salem by 20 and 15 points, respectively, in the 2016 primary. Hillary Clinton did more poorly in these areas in 2016, falling to about 54-46% in North Salem and 53-47% in the eastern precincts.
The Marion portion of Salem voted for every Democrat on the ballot running statewide in 2016 except Brad Avakian (who lost the city about 48-52%), the only Democrat who lost statewide.
Rural/unincorporated Marion County has a distinct trend towards Republicans
The second biggest voting bloc in Marion County are rural and unincorporated voters. Now these voters are hardly the same, just as the voters within Salem are not one homogeneous bloc. This group includes people who live in the Santiam pass, a remote area in the mountains, as well as those who live in farming regions of various kinds, and people who just don’t want to live in the city. Some in northern Marion County may be commuters into the Portland area, while some may work down in Corvallis or Albany. Some actually live in small unincorporated communities like Brooks that have some amenities purely rural areas lack, while those in the unincorporated communities of Four Corners an Hayesville, embedded in eastern Salem, from a cultural perspective might as well live in Salem itself, or at least a suburb of it.
Unfortunately, at this time I can’t provide as exhaustive a look at the difference between Four Corners and Hayesville versus the more true rural areas of the county as I am for the firmer distinction between simply incorporated cities and the rest of the county, but I can still provide some.
Purely rural voters in Marion County have only slightly trended Republican relative to the state
Looking just at the rural vote, without Four Corners and Hayesville, there is an eerie consistency to the vote relative to Democratic fortunes statewide since 2002. There has only been a slight downward trend since then, and in fact 2016 seemed to have a slightly better performance than 2012 or 2014. In fact since 2004, when John Kerry lost the rural areas by roughly 35-65% to George W. Bush we have done better, with Barack Obama’s nearly 40-60% loss in 2008 and Hillary Clinton’s 38-62% in 2016 as the best performances.
Hayesville borders northern and eastern Salem
The unincorporated neighborhood of Hayesville just outside Salem has heavily Hispanic pockets, and is largely working class. It seemed to shift in our direction from 2002-2012, but has gone the other way since. Overall, not much of a change.
Four Corners borders eastern Salem
Four Corners is whiter than Hayesville, and to the south, but also largely working class. It has generally been more Democratic than Hayesville, but has more sharply trended away from us in the last couple elections.
Keizer is the next biggest city after Salem in Marion County. Bordering just on the northwest of Salem, it is the capital city’s main suburb. While Salem has become a Democratic-leaning city, Keizer has long been a Republican-leaning city and has solidified its lean.
Over the last nearly 30 years Keizer has increased its lean toward Republicans
While most of the major cities in the Willamette Valley trended Democratic in 2016, Keizer went from Voting 54-46% for Mitt Romney to more than 55-45% for Donald Trump. Ron Wyden narrowly won the city by about 52-48% in 2016 (while he won the state as a whole by closer to 63-37%, and Salem 62-38%), and was the only Democrat on the ballot to do so. In recent presidential elections the best Democratic performances were Barack Obama’s 2008 performance, about a 3 point loss, and Bill Clinton’s 1996, a 0.6% loss. John Kerry’s 2004 performance ranks the worst, at a 42-58% loss. Clinton’s 2016 performance was the third worst since 1992, and relative to her statewide performance it was the worst.
In the last decade Democrats have trended higher in Woodburn
Woodburn in North Marion is a swingier city, though in 2016 all but one Democrat (Brad Avakian, who lost the city by about 1%) won the city and all but one did better in the city than statewide. Woodburn is majority Hispanic and quickly becoming less white as the under 18 population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. Hillary Clinton, with a win of about 56-44%, did better in Woodburn than any national Democrat has since 1996, when her husband slightly outdid her. She ran farther ahead of her national popular vote than any other national Democrat in Woodburn, and it isn’t even close. The same is true of the smaller town of Gervais just south of Woodburn, another majority Hispanic city, except Clinton’s 57.5-42.5% victory there is wider than any other national Democrat’s since at least before 1992, as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all lost the city, while Barack Obama’s best performance was an almost 54-46% victory in 2008.
Democrats have been steadily improving in the small town of Gervais
Democrats have been on a general upswing in these relatively small but heavily Hispanic cities, and this year especially had a sharp rise in our numbers.
The only other city in Marion County that Democrats commonly carry is Silverton. It is quite a swingy city, with half of the Democrats running statewide in 2016 winning it and half losing it. Silverton over time has become more of a tourist town, as it has long been closely connected with beautiful Silver Falls State Park, but also more recently the Oregon Garden. While compared to the rest of the state that hasn’t sparked a consistent Democratic trend, in presidential elections the city made a shift from 2000, when it voted 4 points to the right of the national popular vote, to 2004, when only 2 points to the right, to the last three elections when it has voted about 0.1 points more Democratic than the popular vote. In 2016 Clinton won the city about 52-48%, worse than Barack Obama had in his two elections, but better than her husband, Al Gore, or John Kerry had previously.
Silverton has trended in different directions in different periods recently
Much of the rest of the county shifted to the right in 2016 and has been for some time. That’s not surprising for what is basically rural areas and small towns. But the shift has been different in distinct regions of the county. I would separate them between the western rural/small town areas, which are more agricultural areas in the Willamette Valley, and the Santiam River and Pass part of the county in the east, as the county heads up into the Cascade mountain range. Most of the western rural parts of the county have shifted from already Republican-leaning to even more Republican. The communities in the mountains in east has gone from often voting for Democrats to quickly becoming much more Republican-leaning. This was particularly the case in 2016, when many precincts in the Coast and Cascade mountains even beyond Marion County that had recently voted more Democratic shifted strongly to vote for Donald Trump. The city of Detroit on the Santiam voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush by about 68-32%, but for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 69-31%.
Detroit, a small, remote town, has had a sharp drop in Democratic performance since the 1990s
The communities at the east end of the county, on the Santiam River, in the pass, in the mountains, though, are relatively small. All of the precincts (numbered in the 900s) combined cast little over 700 votes for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined.
The rest of the rural areas have been consistently Republican leaning and just became more so. Jefferson is a good example. It’s a small town that sits on the Linn County border, between Salem and Albany. Jefferson went from voting 56-44% for George Bush in 1992 to nearly 53-47% for Bill Clinton in 1996. Since then the city has voted Republican consistently, but the roughly 68-32% Trump win over Hillary Clinton was the widest margin a Republican has enjoyed in over 25 years.
Jefferson has consistently voted redder than the state, except when a local Dem was running
Another city in southern Marion County, Stayton, went from voting about 57-43% for McCain, to 62-38% for Romney, to 66-34% for Trump, which is a typical trend for most of the small towns in the county.
In 2016 there were some diverging trends, though. Several rural precincts and small towns, after generally getting redder through successive elections, went the other way.
Aurora, on the Clackamas County border, reversed its long Republican trend in 2016
a rustic scene outside Aurora, Oregon
In Aurora, a small town in North Marion, voters voted more Democratic relative to the statewide vote for every statewide race than they had the last time that office was up, except one. A nearly 41-59% loss in the presidential race there in 2012 shifted to a roughly 44-56% loss in 2016. Nearby Hubbard had its long-term Republican trend mellow a bit as well, and so did Mount Angel, which also is near Clackamas County in the Marion County’s northeast.
Overall Marion County hasn’t had a big shift over recent years in how it votes relative to the rest of the state, just a slight Republican trend. The county has consistently leaned a bit Republican, but the Republican edge is blunted by Democratic votes in Salem and a few smaller cities. In most statewide elections Republicans will pull out a small net number of votes from the county that will be canceled out by Democratic votes in other areas like Eugene, Corvallis, and Portland.
The Amtrak station in Salem
But the shift within Salem to voting more Democratic has affected state politics in a positive way for Democrats despite Marion County’s trend. In 2003 Democrats had one state senate district in the Salem area, held by Salem Democrat Peter Courtney, and no state house districts. In 2004 we picked up HD-22, the heavily Hispanic district in Woodburn, Gervais, and parts of Salem. In 2006 we picked up HD-21, which takes in most of the rest of the more Democratic areas of the city. In 2014 we picked up HD-20, which takes in parts of South Salem in Marion County and West Salem in Polk County. Now Senate President Peter Courtney still holds our only senate district in the Salem area, but we hold 3 of the 4 Salem-based state house districts. In 2016 HD-22 elected its first Latina representative, Teresa Alonso Leon, previously a Woodburn City Councilor. As Salem becomes more Democratic and voters continue to cluster more in cities generally, I expect this success to continue even if Marion County remains stubbornly Republican overall.