Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm glad this is more conclusive. Rossi was right with Gregoire for a while, which made me worried the "GOP" gambit was paying off.

[Ogre Mage]

Looks like Gregoire wins.

   And I am SO HAPPY.

[bgwah]

Gregoire is currently at 53.5%. I highly doubt Dino Rossi will be able to overcome this even if late voters break heavily in his favor (which I doubt will happen).

For State Treasurer, McIntire is at 52.2%. I think it's safe to say McIntire wins.

Goldmark has 50.4% for Commissioner of Public Lands right now. This could definitely change still, and might even be likely at this point.

Darcy Burner also has 50.4% in the 8th District with a vote margin of less than 1,000. Personally I think late ballots will break heavily for Reichert and let him win, but I hope I'm wrong.

Proposition 1 (Mass transit) looks like it will pass. All of the initiatives have voted as expected.

King County has been extremely Democratic so far. Obama is currently at 74% and Gregoire at 69%. I'm not sure what happened here. I'm also surprised with Obama over 60% in Snohomish and at 58% in Pierce. One thing's for certain--John McCain was utterly decimated in suburban Seattle.

[bgwah]

Burner's lead is down to 60 votes. I'm about 97% certain Reichert will win.

[Daniel Z]

Good night so far.

[Keystone Phil]

Terribly disappointing. I had very, very high hopes for Dino. Oh well. I hope he stays involved.

[Alcon]

Note that later ballots are more likely to be GOP, if history follows.  Either way, Democrats had a pretty amazing year all-around, and in Snohomish County especially.  The biggest swing was not in Okanogan County, surprisingly.  It was Lewis County.  Who would have expected?

President
Obama murdered in the Seattle suburbs.  Other than some mixed results among really low-scale voters in Eastern Washington, this was just a blowout.



Governor
Well, I was right that Gregoire would do pretty badly among low-scale union workers.  On the other hand, she out-performed every other single group.  She may end up beating Kerry.  Who would have guessed?



Lt. Governor
Were people seriously worried about this race?  The only demographic where McCraw is going to under-perform is among regular Stranger readers.  So, maybe Cap Hill.  Maybe.  In all seriousness, he did under-perform his margin a bit in King County, and I think a few voters went McCraw on social issues.  Otherwise, murder.



Secretary of State
Reed underperformed in the Portland media market, as he's inclined to do.  But more than anything, he under-performed a little everywhere.  Certainly no 2-to-1.



State Treasurer
This is a pretty unexceptional map.  Just two basic notes.  McIntire was very close in a lot of bigger counties (Clallam, Skagit, Spokane).  Also, Martin definitely won a lot of those governmental types who let Reed win Thurston 2-to-1, but not nearly enough.  Democrats are likely to retain.



Attorney General
Could someone please, please explain to me how Jason Osgood out-performed John Ladenburg?  Please.



Superintendent of Public Instruction
This is a pretty damn boring map.  The primary made it look like we might see some geographical distinctions.  They're still around a bit -- Dorn did well around Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities -- but things regressed to the mean.  The most extreme result was 57.8% for Dorn in Benton.  It'll take until precinct results before I know if there's any real pattern here.



Insurance Commissioner
Boring and predictable map, but Okanogan being red here says a lot about demographic changes in that county.

[Alcon]

Yeah, second-wave absentees are much more Republican, it seems.  Spokane County just fell from Obama +3 to barely Obama +0.  It will likely flip to McCain.

On the other hand, King County is still underrepresented in returns.  It's 29% of the state's population and about 44% of remaining ballots.

Edit: Although Pierce County is not at all reporting remaining ballots.  Still, I doubt the Democrats are going to expand their margins much.

[Alcon]

Late ballot effect looks pretty big.  Wahkiakum swung something like 2.5-3%, and there are still military ballots out.  Obama will probably finish up 14% or 15%, is my guess.  Gregoire will tighten a few points.  That includes the high pending rate in King County.

The Presidential race in Okanogan County, write-ins only:

Ron Paul - 32 (not inc. "John Paul")
Hillary Clinton - 19
Bill Cosby - 2
Bob Barr (idiot) - 1
Jesus Christ ("because no one above is worthy") - 1
Mitt Romney - 1

The best part: 7 of Clinton's 19 write-in votes were misspelled.

In the congressional race, Ralph Nader (2) leads, tailed by Joe the Plumber (1).

Someone wrote in "Elvis" for every office on the ballot other than President.  And in the Attorney General race, someone actually wrote in "Undecided."  A Mr. Dick Wanker put up a strong showing in the 7th District, with three votes.

[Alcon]

OK, so the going rate seems to be that, in the later absentees, Obama loses about 4.5% and McCain gains the same.

Under this paradigm, I set all projected county turnouts to 2004 level * 10%.  A few counties may break this, but it should be about the going rate.

Extrapolated, assuming I did my math correctly, I can now extrapolate the following results.  In order for this race to tighten, you'd need either a comparatively low King County turnout or exponentially better GOP results in later balloting.  In order to make this a 15% win for Obama, McCain would have to swing late ballots like 15% or the aforementioned low Democratic turnout vs. 2004.

President
Obama 2,518,385 (57.97%)
McCain 1,755,114 (40.40%)
Other 70,688 (1.63%)

Margin: Obama +17.57%

I didn't check, but I assume Gregoire is seeing about the same loss.  As such, I can project the following mathematical results

Governor
Gregoire 2,273,159 (53.53%)
Rossi 1,973,025 (46.47%)

Margin: Gregoire +7.06%

[Meeker]

What about the Lands Commissioner race?

[Alcon]

State Treasurer
McIntire 2,024,645 (51.38%)
Martin 1,915,540 (48.62%)

Margin: McIntire +2.76%

Commissioner of Public Lands
Goldmark 1,994,180 (50.63%)
Sutherland 1,944,850 (49.37%)

Margin: Goldmark +1.26%

[Meeker]

Can you do that with Burner/Reichert or is it too complex to break it up?

[Alcon]

Can you do that with Burner/Reichert or is it too complex to break it up?

Well, Reichert leads and my methodology assumes that later ballots are going to be more Republican than current ballots...

But King County's dump today was actually slightly more Democratic, and then another more Republican one, I think.  That also happened in San Juan -- the dump today was 73% Obama when the original was 71% Obama.  I think Reichert briefly gained a bigger lead and then it shrunk?

In any case, my model says:

Burner 232,571 (46.51%)
Reichert 267,494 (53.49%)

But I'm way uncomfortable with using it this for this.  Either way, I do think Reichert will win.  King County's WA-8 portion is barely under-represented vs. Pierce County's (about 49% in vs. about 48%).  Late ballots being more Democratic seems a lot less likely than them being more Republican, even if they're barely more Republican.

[Meeker]

That's not what I want to hear Alcon

[Alcon]

Want some consolation?

King County just dumped about 75,000 new ballots.  The breakdown was essentially identical to the pre-existing Democratic margins, over 70% Obama.

Which oddly made my model's margin tighten, which doesn't make sense, since he beat expectations.  wtf?  arghh.

[Meeker]

Yea, I just noticed that. I'm unclear on whether these are poll or absentee votes at this point though.

[Ogre Mage]

Off topic, do you guys think the Lands Commissioner or the 8th Congressional District is the more important race?

[bgwah]

I would rather have Burner win if I could only have one of the two. It doesn't look like she will, though.

[Alcon]

Commissioner of Public Lands
Goldmark 1,893,427 (50.21%)
Sutherland 1,877,463 (49.79%)

[Alcon]

I don't like this model.  It's exponentializing more than I expected.  I'm going to create a new model tonight, which extrapolates uniformly based on new ballot returns.  This will bias toward the Democrats if late absentees are even more Republican than second-wave absentees, as I expect they will be.  But as it stands, my model is too biased toward the GOP.  I expect that the truth will be about 2/3 of the way between the current model and the new one.

I'll figure this out!

[Alcon]

OK, so here are the new models.  I also fixed a stupid Excel error that was causing it to inflate turnout drastically.

Model A (dumb projection) assumes that all future ballots will be cast in exact proportion to their current ratio.  This measure does not take into account the late ballot effect at all, and thus it has a Democratic bias.

Model A (Obama +19.79%)
Obama 1,857,676 (59.07%)
McCain 1,235,248 (39.28%)
Other 52,068 (1.66%)

Model B (old model) assumes that all future ballots will be about 4.5% more Republican and 4.5% less Democratic than current ballots.  This should be the most Republican-friendly model, and should become moreso as time goes on.

Model B (Obama +16.33%)
Obama 1,803,305 (57.33%)
McCain 1,289,619 (41.01%)
Other 52,068 (1.66%)

Model C (new model) takes the earliest number I have for each county, and then subtracts it from the current totals.  It takes this new number, which is the break-down for second-wave ballots, and extrapolates based on it.  I think this is the most neutral, but two things tell me it may have a slight Dem bias.  First, early King County second-wave ballots look more like first-wave ballots to me, but I can't tell.  Secondly, my suspicion is that last-wave ballots are even more Republican because they're more likely to be military.  On the other hand, if there is no new ballot information, Model C defaults to Model B's Republican-leaning methodology.  So, Model C's slight Democratic lean is probably neutralized at the moment.

Model C (Obama +17.76%)
Obama 1,825,548 (58.05%)
McCain 1,266,946 (40.28%)
Other 52,498 (1.67%)

My current margin projection would be about Obama +16.5-18.0%.  Unless of course my modeling has a fatal flaw, which is always possible.  We shall see.

Gov, Lands Comish, and Trez coming up.  I don't have older counts for these races, so we'll have to wait for new data to come in for Model C to work.

[Alcon]

President
Model A (Obama +19.79%)
Obama 1,857,676 (59.07%)
McCain 1,235,248 (39.28%)

Model B (Obama +16.33%)
Obama 1,803,305 (57.33%)
McCain 1,289,619 (41.01%)

Model C (Obama +17.76%)
Obama 1,825,548 (58.05%)
McCain 1,266,946 (40.28%)

Likely range: Obama +16.5-18.5

Governor
Model A (Gregoire +9.82%)
Gregoire 1,726,993 (54.91%)
Rossi 1,417,999 (45.09%)

Model B (Gregoire +6.32%)
Gregoire 1,671,834 (53.16%)
Rossi 1,473,158 (46.84%)

Model C
Insufficient data

Likely range: Gregoire +6.5-8.5

State Treasurer
Model A (McIntire +5.75%)
McIntire 1,662,859 (52.87%)
Martin 1,482,134 (47.13%)

Model B (McIntire +1.88%)
McIntire 1,602,096 (50.94%)
Martin 1,542,896 (49.06%)

Model C
Insufficient data

Likely range: McIntire +2.0-4.0

Commissioner of Public Lands
Model A (Goldmark +3.77%)
Goldmark 1,631,765 (51.88%)
Sutherland 1,513,228 (48.12%)

Model B (Sutherland +0.06%)
Goldmark 1,571,510 (49.97%)
Sutherland 1,573,483 (50.03%)

Model C
Insufficient data

Likely range: Goldmark +0.0-2.0

[Alcon]

Unless King County stops delivering dumps that are more Dem-favorable than their initial results, which it just did for the third time in a row, Sutherland is toast.

Martin is now probably dead in the water either way.

Burner may hold on yet (she tied the latest batch), but it's unlikely.

[Meeker]

Yea, Goldmark is now above 51%. What a wonderful treat!