Despite John Kerry's vacation residence in Idaho, the 2004 election was never in doubt. In 2000, Idaho was only surpassed by Utah in its support for George W. Bush. According to a (Democratic) state legislator that I talked to, roughly 4/5 of the legislature is Republican.

When the results came in, they were unsurprising. They were once again surpassed only by Utah and once again all but one county went for Bush. The same county remained blue between 2000 and 2004. The Democrats only have two strongholds in Idaho, Moscow (home of the University of Idaho) and my own Gate City (home of another university). Since Moscow is on the state's west coast and Gate City its east, I knew that the midling defecting county wasn't one of those two cities. I also knew it wasn't Boise, the state's most "urban" city located in the southwestern portion of the state. It seemed to be located around Twin Falls, but I found it hard to believe that Twin Falls would go Democratic.

Then I thought about Wyoming's sole blue county: Teton County, home of Jackson Hole. My friend Linus lives there and whent he subject of politics came up he mentioned that Jackson was a really liberal town. It's interesting when you consider that Teton County is actually the wealthiest in the nation (and Dick Cheney's official residence, incidentally). But as Slate noted a while back, those with more than $10 million in assets are often more likely to vote liberal because tax increases won't hurt them the same way it hurts the moderately rich trying to claw their way up.

Eel and I attended a Reckless Kelly show in Hailey, Idaho last August. We commented that we wouldn't mind ending up in a place as nice as that. It's gorgeous. It wasn't hard to determine that one would have to be pretty wealthy to live there as does, for instance, Bruce Willis. Hailey is also not particularly far away from Ketchum, site of one of the Heinz-Kerry estates.

Sure enough, Blaine County, home to both Hailey and Ketchum, is Idaho's dissident blue county.

Note:
First map: This is actually a map of the 2000 vote, though no Idaho counties changed direction. Note that this map has a color-gamut ranging from faded to stark colorization. Not only is the rest of Idaho red, but with a couple of exceptions it's very red. The only tinges of pink are Gate County, Moscow's county, and Shoshone County on the Montana border.
Second map: This one is from 2004. Teton County went from Bush to Kerry, proving that my friend Linus's Kerry vote at least counted for something.