Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[Alcon]

Laura Grant is actually hanging on there at 46% in the 16th.  Obviously that's going to be a tough race, but that's a healthy enough result.

jerry f**king thorpe.  tacoma school board is doomed

[bgwah]

Grant holding on in the 16th LD at 46%.

The 15th LD, despite voting for Obama, is giving 66% to the Rethug.

The 9th LD is crazier than usual, giving 73% to the Rethug candidates.

[Meeker]

I've been on the phone with politico types... no one can begin to explain Thorpe. It's just one big collective WTF.

This is the county that elected Dale Washam though...

[Meeker]

And in the 15th, how does someone who doesn't write a voters' pamphlet statement receive 19% of the vote?! What the hell did these people base their decision on?!

[Meeker]

Apparently Thorpe was on the Port Commission years ago. People would need to have a really, really good memory to have that help him though...

[Alcon]

The 15th is always extremely Republican legislatively, especially in primaries.  Which is kind of weird, because its Democratic zones (Mexi-towns, Columbia River Gorge) are generally pretty hackish.

Isn't the no-name guy also the one with an address in White Salmon?  He also owns a company that makes a crappy spyware product.  Looks like he advanced on the basis of not being the other Democrat in the race.

No wonder the GOP % is so high.

[Meeker]

Accessible voting results from King County came in, too small to do anything meaningful.

No more updates from King County races or the Legislative races tonight... Pierce has the first round of poll votes in about a half hour (I suspect they'll only end up doing two instead of the three they original planned on).

[Alcon]

A few more King County ballots round out the night.

Hutchison 37.37% (-0.03)
Constantine 22.41% (+0.03)

McGinn 26.58% (+0.02)
Mallahan 25.77% (-0.04)
Nickels 25.06% (+0.01)

Bag Tax
Yes 41.91% (+0.08)
No 58.09% (-0.08)

more pierce in...screw it, meeker's faster.

[War on Want]

I saw some results on the news tonight. Odd that I didn't follow this at all. I only saw some ad's in Seattle for this Dow Constantine guy.

[Meeker]

I wonder if Nickels would endorse in a Mallahan/McGinn slugfest. Probably not, Mallahan has been attacking him relentlessly and McGinn and him disagree too fervently on the tunnel.

I agree with Alcon though, Mallahan would probably win. It'd be a fun race.

[Meeker]

There's also some absentee votes in there too... and only like 700 poll voters. Weird update.

ETA: There should be around 4,000-4,500 more poll ballots to come.

[Alcon]

Oops, I deleted the post accidentally.  But yeah, could there really be only 700 poll voters countywide?

Also, isn't Figueroa upsetting Bird pretty surprising?  Everyone I know in the 28th was pretty sure they'd both advance but Bird would win by a pretty reasonable margin.

[Meeker]

Oops, I deleted the post accidentally.  But yeah, could there really be only 700 poll voters countywide?

There were around 5,500 poll voters in the August 2007 primary... factor in lower turnout, more registered voters overall, but perhaps fewer poll voters... I'd guess around 5,000 poll voters, give or take a few hundred?

Also, isn't Figueroa upsetting Bird pretty surprising?  Everyone I know in the 28th was pretty sure they'd both advance but Bird would win by a pretty reasonable margin.

Yeah. I knew she was in trouble (all the U.P. incumbents are), and I was one of the most pessimistic about their chances in local circles, but this is even worse than I thought. A 14-year incumbent getting 38% of the vote? Damn. Switch Bird and Figueroa's numbers and you'd have gotten my prediction.

So Carnrite's votes will flow to Figueroa and he'll win comfortably and then based on these results Ehart will trounce McCluskey and Choiniere will take out Smith as well. Only remaining question is how badly Grassi does against the gadfly crazy. Quite frankly I wouldn't rule out him losing at this point.

[Meeker]

One of the labor-backed Seattle Port Commissioner candidates, who has raised around $50,000, is barely beating a man who refuses to accept campaign contributions.

[Meeker]

Apparently Jan Shabro is too busy giving Shawn Bunney a blow job to post any more results tonight.

ETA: I retract my crude snipe. And I was way off on the poll voter number: only 3,000.

[Meeker]

Pierce already has an abstract up.

I may give Shabro a lot of crap, and I still think she's an idiotic Republican tool, but she has been doing a lot of good things in the brief few months as Auditor that McCarthy never did...

[bgwah]

Nickels fell further behind... Bag tax is up to 43%. Stupid Seattle.

Hutchison also dropped to 35.92%

[Alcon]

R-71 showing some very non-random error:

http://horsesass.org/?p=19270

No longer a certainty for qualifying for the ballot at all.  This basically means that the SoS's office is either being inconsistent, or was incorrect when they called the binder configuration randomized.

Either way, potential happy fun lawsuit time.

[Frodo]

Glad to see Mallahan is in the lead, however narrowly.

How much of a percentage of the vote will he likely get in the general election when he and McGinn face off again in November?  Is it safe to assume that Nickel's voters will vote for him?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nickels loses ground; Mallahan takes lead

By Jim Brunner
Seattle Times staff reporter

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' chances of re-election slipped Wednesday as new vote totals showed him still in third place, and falling further behind challengers Joe Mallahan and Mike McGinn.

With tens of thousands of votes remaining to be counted, neither Nickels nor his rivals were ready to call the election.

Mallahan now leads with 26.8 percent of the vote. McGinn is in second with 26.5 percent. Nickels is third with 25.2 percent. The top two will advance to the Nov. 3 general election.

Wednesday's count of about 16,000 Seattle ballots left Nickels more than 1,000 votes out of second place. He was just 455 votes out of second place on election night.

King County Elections estimates about 50,000 ballots remain to be counted in the city.

Seattle political consultant Michael Grossman said Nickels is finished if he doesn't show some momentum today when another large batch of votes is tallied. "I think that will be decisive," he said.

It might actually be better for Nickels to lose in the primary at this point, Grossman suggested, because he'd face a brutal and difficult task in a general election.

"His brand as a politician is so tainted voters are not going to listen to anything he [Nickels] has to say," Grossman said. "Short of some egregious behavioral quirk that McGinn or Mallahan could exhibit, it's hard to see how it is going to turn around for him."

[Alcon]

Statistically screwed as of 5 PM today:  Greg Nickels, Referendum 71's ballot placement chances, misplaced primary-based optimism over Susan Hutchison's November outlook.

A great day for snow-hating gay people who aren't hair/make-up stylists.  Because Dow Constantine obviously does not use those.

Edit: Oh, about Referendum 71's fate being certain?  Just kidding, for the fifth time.  I know how hard it is to explain this stuff, but I think Dave Ammons may be a bit over his head when it comes to the statistics stuff.  Basically, so far 2,401 signatures have been re-checked to see if the voters have subsequently registered.  Of those, 285 (11.87%) have.  It's unclear whether this includes duplicates or not, and whether the updated total reflects this or not, so yet again we have no actual idea of what's happening.

Edit edit: My knuckles are really bleeding and I'm not sure why.  Pretty sure this is related though.

[Frodo]

Edit edit: My knuckles are really bleeding and I'm not sure why.  Pretty sure this is related though.

Maybe they're telling you to get a well-deserved break from the computer, and give them a rest? 

[Meeker]

It looks like Nickels may concede tomorrow morning. I feel sorry for the guy.

Wonder what Joe Mallahan is going to base his campaign off of now. His message thus far has just been "I'm not Greg Nickels and he sucks".

[bgwah]

It looks like Nickels may concede tomorrow morning. I feel sorry for the guy.

Wonder what Joe Mallahan is going to base his campaign off of now. His message thus far has just been "I'm not Greg Nickels and he sucks".

How about "I'm not Mike McGinn and he sucks"

[bgwah]

Hutchison continues to fall, she's now at 33.27% with Constantine creeping up at 26.72%.

McGinn is unfortunately back in the lead for Mayor...

27.60% McGinn
27.01% Mallahan
25.42% Nickels

[Meeker]

Bag fee is also only failing 53-47 now.