What's going on in Washington?

[GALeftist]

So, unlike most of the rest of the country, Washington and California have top two primaries. Historically this gives them better predictive power than primaries elsewhere in the nation (e.g. Democrats won congressional primaries by low single digits in 2010 and 2014 but by like 26 points in 2018). This is particularly true in Washington, where the Democrats' higher propensity base makes races less prone to the insane swings in turnout you'll see in parts of Cali (although Democrats can usually still count on a bump of ~4 points between the primary and the general iirc). In fact, many people have retrospectively pointed to them as a leading indicator of possible Democratic issues in 2020, when their showing was pretty unimpressive relative to polling at the time, e.g. Democrats trailed Republicans in WA-08 by 1.7 points (tho obv not outside the range where their typical general bump wouldn't be likely to push them over the edge, as ultimately happened).

If Washington primaries are a leading indicator, though, then (very tentatively, as NYT thinks about 18% of the votes have yet to be counted) we might not be looking at a super red year. For example, even though WA-08 moved slightly right in redistricting, Democrats still narrowly lead in that primary with ~91% of the vote in. That lead could easily dissolve, but it probably won't reach 2020 levels imo, not with much of King still out. Smiley is also pretty unambiguously DOA. Finally, on the county level, my (unsophisticated) analysis suggests Democrats are no more than 6 points than they were in 2020 in any completed county, are usually only 2 or 3 points worse, and in most counties west of the Cascades have held or even gained ground.

What's going on here? Does this suggest that the GCB polls are real? Is this just the empirical equivalent of overfitting a model? I legitimately don't know but I think this is being pretty underdiscussed.

[Xing]

Washington is probably somewhat less susceptible to a red wave at this point, since voters tend to be relatively engaged, and the Seattle area is the kind of place where the Republican brand is extremely toxic at the national level (less so at the statewide level), so even many voters who aren’t crazy about Biden are still not likely to vote Republican.

[Minnesota Mike]

The NYT estimated votes left to count has really been crap this cycle. Washington is over 90% in according to the WA state SOS website, only an estimated 132,000 votes left to count. WA-08 is almost all in with what few votes are left to count almost entirely in King county.



https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/20220802/turnout.html

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Washington is probably somewhat less susceptible to a red wave at this point, since voters tend to be relatively engaged, and the Seattle area is the kind of place where the Republican brand is extremely toxic at the national level (less so at the statewide level), so even many voters who aren’t crazy about Biden are still not likely to vote Republican.

That's ofc a thing exclusive to Seattle /s

[wbrocks67]

Washington is probably somewhat less susceptible to a red wave at this point, since voters tend to be relatively engaged, and the Seattle area is the kind of place where the Republican brand is extremely toxic at the national level (less so at the statewide level), so even many voters who aren’t crazy about Biden are still not likely to vote Republican.

This is all seems.... very cope-ish? You could make this argument about anywhere in the country. WA is no more engaged than any other state. You can't just use the result in WA and just say "oh well its happening in WA, but nowhere else!"

If anything, the results in WA thus far bear out the fact that the GCB is equal right now.

And if the Republican brand is as toxic in the Seattle/suburbs as you claim, that Democrats have a great chance of keeping in the house in the fall then, since many seats reside in those types of areas.

[GALeftist]

Washington is probably somewhat less susceptible to a red wave at this point, since voters tend to be relatively engaged, and the Seattle area is the kind of place where the Republican brand is extremely toxic at the national level (less so at the statewide level), so even many voters who aren’t crazy about Biden are still not likely to vote Republican.

Even if I accept the premise here (and I'm honestly not sure I do; relative strength in ancestrally Democratic areas was quite important to the 2018 blue wave, plus you could've made the same case in 2020 and the primaries were still a pretty good leading indicator then), "state dominated by metro area(s) where the Republican brand has rapidly lost credibility" describes at least like 15 states (including, like, Minnesota and Colorado) as well as a bunch of important swing districts not unlike WA-08. If the red wave is limited to areas outside those states that is a massive deal, unless it's twice as intense as the nationwide numbers indicate in other states or something like that.

[Pericles]

Republicans really don't need a wave to win both chambers.

[GALeftist]

Republicans really don't need a wave to win both chambers.

Not really taking a stance on what those chances are here, I think the Republicans still have the upper hand fwiw. My thing is just that the median expectation here and elsewhere seems to be that the House PV will shake out to around R+4 and that seems pretty seriously inconsistent with these results.

[wbrocks67]

If anything, the results in WA-08 are slightly better right now than they were in 2020, which does not align with any red wave.

[Minnesota Mike]

FWIW the total 2 party primary vote in WA-SEN is 58D - 42R. In 2018 it was 61D - 39R. So 2022 is about 6 points to the right of 2018. I think the Dems would take a 6 point swing from 2018 nationally in a second.

BTW I think we can go ahead and label WA-SEN as safe D. I know some people had it likely D and I understand that, I am cautious with rankings myself, but a 16 point swing from the primary to the general would be pretty unprecedented in WA.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Somewhat agree with Xing. I still buy the theory that the West Coast (WA, OR, CA) is less susceptible to major R gains than elsewhere in the country. Although I'd like to believe Dems will outperform Atlas expectations in NV and AZ too.

[Roll Roons]

Somewhat agree with Xing. I still buy the theory that the West Coast (WA, OR, CA) is less susceptible to major R gains than elsewhere in the country. Although I'd like to believe Dems will outperform Atlas expectations in NV and AZ too.

FWIW, the 2010 wave largely bypassed the West Coast. Republicans only picked up one House seat in WA and nothing in CA or OR.

[Xing]

Washington is probably somewhat less susceptible to a red wave at this point, since voters tend to be relatively engaged, and the Seattle area is the kind of place where the Republican brand is extremely toxic at the national level (less so at the statewide level), so even many voters who aren’t crazy about Biden are still not likely to vote Republican.

This is all seems.... very cope-ish? You could make this argument about anywhere in the country. WA is no more engaged than any other state. You can't just use the result in WA and just say "oh well its happening in WA, but nowhere else!"

If anything, the results in WA thus far bear out the fact that the GCB is equal right now.

And if the Republican brand is as toxic in the Seattle/suburbs as you claim, that Democrats have a great chance of keeping in the house in the fall then, since many seats reside in those types of areas.

Why would I ‘cope’? It’s not like I want Republicans to do well. Anyway, I’m not saying that Washington would be the only place in the country which wouldn’t swing heavily Republican, simply that Democrats doing relatively better in WA doesn’t necessarily tell us much about what would happen in the Midwest, for example.

[GALeftist]

Somewhat agree with Xing. I still buy the theory that the West Coast (WA, OR, CA) is less susceptible to major R gains than elsewhere in the country. Although I'd like to believe Dems will outperform Atlas expectations in NV and AZ too.

FWIW, the 2010 wave largely bypassed the West Coast. Republicans only picked up one House seat in WA and nothing in CA or OR.

This seems pretty majorly revisionist. Murray won that year by a whopping 5 points; Wyden obviously cruised, but I don't really think that's surprising. Democrats did hold on for dear life in OR-GOV, but Kitzhaber only won by 1.5 points. House gains were muted, but tons of west coast seats were very close, including CA-11 (today CA-09), WA-02, CA-20 (today CA-16), and OR-05; OR-04 would have likely been close without DeFazio, and the California map back then actually only had a handful of competitive Democratic-held seats to begin with, only 4 or 5.