Black Rock City is becoming richer and more Democratic, according to Burning Man Organization's latest census.
More women than men attended Burning Man in 2023, the first time that's been the case since the census began asking the question in 2013. Last year's event also saw more first-time Burners than ever before.
With this year's batch of Burners heading to the Black Rock Desert to kick off the 2024 event, here's a look at what we know about past years' attendees.
Burning Man 'virgins' on the rise
Will first-timers be in the majority at Burning Man 2024? It's highly unlikely, but their numbers are creeping up. The census found that 43.9% of last year's attendees had never attended the event before, sharply up from 2022, when just 28.3% reported that they were first-time Burners.
First-timers approached 40% of the population in 2013 and 2016, but last year's percentage was the highest figure since the survey began.
Among last year's Burners, the median number of Burning Man events attended was two.
The future (of Burning Man) is female
When the poll began asking attendees to identify their gender in 2013, males outnumbered females by about a 3-to-2 ratio — 58.3% to 40.1%, with 1.7% choosing neither of these. Those numbers remained steady for most of the past decade before flipping last year — 49.1% female, 47.1% male, with an all-time high of 3.0% selecting neither.
The organization began asking more detailed questions about gender identity for the first time in 2023 — 2.1% identified as transgender female, 0.6% identified as transgender male, 1.7% identified as nonbinary, 0.7% identified as genderqueer, 0.2% identified as two-spirit, and 0.3% said their category wasn't listed.
Bluest Burn ever
According to Gallup's most recent party affiliation poll , the U.S. is nearly evenly split — 49% leaning toward Democrats, 48% leaning toward Republicans. But at Black Rock City, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 16-to-1.
Democrats have made up more than 50% of Burners in every poll since 2017, but that number went up sharply in 2023 to an all-time high of 64.9%. But the Democratic gains came at the expense not of Republicans, but the unaffiliated. Burners identifying their political party as "unaffiliated" or "none" fell from 42.1% in 2014 to a low of 27.0% last year.
The percentage of Republican Burners at the countercultural event peaked in 2016 at 6.8%, but that number reached an all-time low last year at 4.1%. They still outnumbered Greens (1.6%), Libertarians (1.4%) and other U.S. political parties (0.9%).
Not quite half of all 2023 attendees (45.3%) said they had turned out to vote in the previous four federal elections; 3.8% said they had participated in none of them (an all-time low, down from 13% in 2016).
Less Californian, and less Nevadan
Despite Burning Man taking place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, just one out of 25 Burners were from Nevada last year. That's an all-time low.
The percentage of Californians dipped to 36.0% last year, the lowest since 2017, as the share of foreign Burners increased. One out of every five Burners said they came to Nevada from outside the United States, the highest since 2017.
Just 67.3% of 2023's attendees said that English was their first language; 7.1% said their first language was Spanish. At least one percent of Burners said their first language was French, German, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch or Italian.
Earning Man
Burning Man attendees in 2023 were wealthier than ever before, with an estimated median household income of more than $148,000. Of those who attended last year's event, 61.1% reported that their household earned more than $100,000, and just over one out of six (17.5%) reporting a household income of more than $300,000.
Just 1.7% said they had no annual income, and another 1.5% said their income was less than $7,500.
The median household income in the U.S. was $74,580 in 2022, according the the U.S. Census Bureau . A full 72% of Burners reported that their households made more than $75,000 a year.
Can you tell me how to get to Black Rock City?
A little over half of all Burners came through Reno on their way to the Black Rock Desert, either on the road or through the Reno airport.
About three out of 10 Burners said they had flown on an airplane at least part of the way to Burning Man; a little under half of those (46.5%) said they passed through Reno-Tahoe International Airport.
As for the rest? They hit the road. Burners said they logged an average of 1,190 miles driving to get to Burning Man. The most common driving route was on I-80 from Northern California; 29.6% reported heading over the pass to get to the Black Rock Desert. Another 23.4% said they drove from Reno, either because they started in Reno or they flew through Reno-Tahoe International Airport.
Others bypassed Reno altogether. About one in seven from the Pacific Northwest on State Route 447; one in 11 drove west from Utah on I-80, and one in five drove up U.S. 395 or U.S. 95 from Southern California, Las Vegas or Arizona.
One out of every 20 said they took a different route altogether.
And 0.7% of attendees said they did not know how they arrived at Burning Man.
This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Who attends Burning Man? Census shows jump in women, the wealthy and Democrats
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