The 2018 Miss Idaho USA pageant is a competition that selects the representative for the state of Idaho in the Miss USA pageant.
Idaho is one of the least successful states in the history of the competition, with only four placements in fifty-seven years. Two of placements were achieved by former Miss Idaho Teen USA titleholders, one of whom was also a former Miss Teen USA.
The first placement came in 1964 with Dorothy Johnson, one of the first African-American semi-finalists in the pageant's history. Their second placement came in 1997 when Brandi Sherwood, Idaho's only Miss Teen USA (1989) placed first runner-up. She later became the first woman to be crowned both Miss USA and Miss Teen USA when she succeeded winner Brook Lee who became Miss Universe. Sherwood has since pursued a career as an actress, and is a rotating model on The Price Is Right. The third came in 2004 when former Miss Idaho Teen USA 1999 Kimberly Glyn Weible made the top 10. Their fourth was in 2009, when Melissa Weber managed to place in the top 15.
Every year, each state holds a preliminary competition to choose their delegate for the Miss USA pageant. In some states (such as Texas and Florida), local pageants are also held to determine delegates for the state competition. The state winners hold the title "Miss State USA" for the year of their reign.
The most successful state is Texas, which has had the most semi-finalists and winners, including five consecutive Miss USA titleholders during the 1980s.[22] Other successful states include California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The least successful states are Delaware, placing only once in 2015; Montana, which has not placed since the 1950s; South Dakota, which has only placed three times (the last time in 2016), and Wyoming, which gained only its second placement in 2010. The only state which has produced more than one Miss Universe is South Carolina.
The Miss Universe Organization licenses out the state pageants to pageant directors, who in some cases are responsible for more than one state. The most well established directorial groups are RPM Productions, created in 1980 (Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina), and Vanbros, created in the early 1990s (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma). Future Productions direct the most states, seven, across the Midwest and Rockies.