King County Elections reports that it received 95,000 ballots this morning at its Tukwila headquarters, the largest single day of ballot returns so far this primary election.
“It was exciting to see so many ballots arrive today,” said Sherril Huff, Elections Director. “Typically Election Day is associated with the highest number of ballot arrivals. We’re processing the ballots as quickly as possible, and expect to include an additional 40,000 in the results report today.”
One of the data points I’m most interested in from this primary is the relative turnout from various regions of the state. Because the two parties have become so dramatically regionalized, I’m curious to see whether the so-called “enthusiasm gap” would result in significantly lower turnout in overwhelmingly blue King County than in its overwhelmingly red counterparts. And last night’s results would initially suggest this to be the case.
But due to obvious logistical reasons, the big, Democratic leaning counties tend to report their results slower than the rest of the state, explaining the oft seen phenomenon in which Democrats tend to pick up support as the vote drags on and Democratic precincts make up a larger and larger percentage of the daily ballot dumps.
For example, last night King County reported 243,755 ballots counted out of 1,074,731 registered voters, for a voter turnout of only 22.68%, compared to about 29% for the rest of the state. But add today’s 95,000 new ballots to the estimated 55,000 ballots left uncounted last night, and King County’s turnout rises to a respectable 37% with likely tens of thousands more ballots still in the mail. Indeed, just last Friday Huff projected a rather optimistic final turnout of 495,000 ballots, or roughly 45 percent. We’ll see.
Apart from simply gaging voter enthusiasm, or rather, its impact on voter turnout, the large number of ballots outstanding in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, Thurston and other counties where Patty Murray outperformed her current statewide average suggests that her percentage of the total vote will likely rise a bit over the coming days, painting a somewhat rosier picture for November… that is, if you believe these primary results to be the least bit predictive. Again, we’ll see.
UPDATE:
King County Elections just updated its results, adding 42,375 ballots to the count, with another estimate 107,000 ballots remaining. Interestingly both Patty Murray and Clint Didier did slightly better in today’s batch of ballots than in last night’s reported results, while Dino Rossi performed slightly worse. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.
And FYI, Murray has climbed from 44% of last nights early results to about 46.7% this afternoon, while Rossi has fallen from 38% to 33.5%. Interesting, though not necessarily meaningful.
Finally the dead ballots and illegal aliens are rolling in. This should give Murray the boost you libs are looking for!
Goldy, in addition to being a good polemicist, your a pretty damn good analyst.
We’ll need to wait and see the final tallies and crosstabs, but what strikes me is the underwhelming (non existent?) anti-incumbent wave.
Despite 24×7 Fox Wurlitzer coverage of soshulist death panels, terror babies, Mosque Mania, etc… it sure as heck looks like any usual off year election, and may turn out to be better for incumbent and challenger Dems.
Now, what do we know about Diddler’s endorsement of Rossi? Will Rossi seek Palin’s endorsement?
Goldy, I’m curious how far to the right do you think Rossi will have to run to pick up the Didier votes?
@3, He’ll have to stay close to the blue line, or he won’t get diddley from west of the Cascades.
# 3: I’m predicting he will try his 2008 approach:
(1) Remaining “moderate” in any televised appearances, sticking to a prepared script, and refusing to answer questions from pesky reporters.
(2) But swinging far to the right in “private” appearances before hand-selected audiences, where reporters and recording devices are prohibited, so he can assure the Tea Party folks he’s really “one of theirs”, despite what he might say in public.
Come to think of it, that’s always been Reichart’s strategy, too. But so far, Reichart’s been successful at it, and Rossi has not.
In the general election for SC, J Pos. 1, I recommend my favorite write-in candidate, “S. Baldrick.”
There’s an interesting set of comments about our election over on 538: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com.....l#comments
In other news:
The last combat troops are leaving Iraq.
Check MSNBC. They seem to have an exclusive on this. Not Fox, not even CNN!
Rachel Maddow of all people is in Baghdad reporting! Amazing.
50,000 “troops” remain but they’re in a training role. Supposedly they’re not tasked in any combat role.
@1 Chuck on 08/18/2010 at 4:38 pm
You forgot the elves, cyborgs and undead zombies. All of which lean strongly Dem.
You’d think the BPublicans would develop an outreach program for the cyborgs, but I guess RNC Chairman, Michael Steele, has not been able to get that going. Something about the cyborgs not being that interested in strippers.
And it is a pity the former owners of foreclosed homes aren’t as appreciative of Rossi as they should be.
The latest SOS update has The Diddler surging to 12.16 %.
@7
The Michael commenting on 538 isn’t me. Not that it really matters or anything.
@11: Thanks for clearing that up! It was an interesting read.
Pretty good peace on our election at RCP.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....06799.html
Um… That would be a pretty good piece @13…
@1
Well, the only dead ballot was the one for Rossi in ’04, or don’t you remember the guy who forged his dead wife’s signature so she could vote for Rossi while 6 feet under.
True to partisan form, the Seattle Times is spinning Patty Murray’s 12-point (and expanding) lead over Dino Rossi as “Murray in trouble”. Can anyone doubt anymore that the Seattle Times is the voice of Washington State’s Republican Party? Is it possible for a newspaper to be further out of touch with its community?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....y_abo.html
@1, @15 — It’s also worth mentioning that the only votes in the 2004 election thrown out as “fraudulent” by a hand-picked Republican judge in a forum-shopped Republican county were 4 Republican votes.
It’s also worth noting that of the 10 ineligible felon voters willing to tell reporters who they voted for, 9 of them voted for Rossi and only 1 (the only woman in the bunch) for Gregoire. Based on this anecdotal evidence, we can reliably extrapolate that the illegal felon vote in 2004 overwhelmingly benefitted Rossi.
@15
In the 2004 election, the Seattle Times found 24 cases of apparent votes by the deceased. Of those 24 only one person was found to have fraudulently voted twice, the case I mentioned previously.
The others were caused by poll workers marking the incorrect line in the polling book (I recall poll workers having to read upside down to show the voter where to sign). In those cases, the voter’s signature was marked on the wrong line, the deceased person never voted. In the other cases voters had similar names, like the woman in the story whose votes were recorded under her mother’s name (same name except for the middle initial), no vote was ever recorded under her own name.
So another GOP fallacy laid to rest, got any other scary stories out there righties?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....rs06m.html
Lawless Republican Behavior Ad Nauseum
A federal immigration judge issued a ruling today that concludes a Bush administration homeland security official illegally leaked private information about Obama’s aunt a few days before the 2008 election in an attempt to give the Republicans a political advantage.
Um, the Times article I linked to shows 3 fraudulent cases, RR says 4. The article may be correct, or more were found after the article was written.
@21 The judge subtracted 4 votes from Rossi’s tally, expanding Gregoire’s victory margin from 129 to 133 votes.
To be more specific, after the statewide hand recount was completed, Gregoire led by 8 votes. At that point, the King County Canvassing Board still had to rule on hundreds of disputed ballots. Both Gregoire and Rossi picked up additional votes from that batch, but Gregoire got 121 more than Rossi did, expanding her lead to 129. The election contest lawsuit that cost Republicans $2 million in legal fees reduced Rossi’s total by 4 votes, bringing Gregoire’s final margin to 133.
Even funnier than the act of voter fraud by forging his wife’s signature on a ballot was when the man pleaded with the court to have his ballot thrown out and have his dead wife’s ballot counted instead, supposedly to honor her dying wish.
These righties, what part of voter fraud don’t they understand?
@17, @18. The felons said they voted for Rossi, which means they probably voted for Gregoire because they knew that whoever they said they voted for, a vote would be subtracted from the total, so by saying they voted for the opposite person they voted for would result in an expanding lead for who they wanted. These are convicted felons, and you all want to take there word? Are you out of your mind? Why would you ever trust them?
@25
And yet you trust them to be smart enough to figure how to manipulate the system. They’re criminals remember?
I only see Murray at 46.31% right now, with all of today’s reporting done. She was a little over 46% after last night. It isn’t like she picked up several percent today — just several tenths of a percent. And she may pick up slightly more — 46.5% at the most, and certainly not over 47%.
As it stands now, the main candidates Rossi, Didier and Akers on the GOP side have 48.41% of the vote. That is two percent more than Murray.
So at this point — it is a horse race. Since the GOP losers were to the right of Rossi, their support should go almost 100% to Rossi.
Back in 1998, Murray got only 45.86% in the primary, but proceeded to win the general election with 58.41% of the vote over Linda Smith. However, 14.92% of the primary vote was for a very moderate Republican Chris Bailey, and a significant chunk of his support went to Murray in the general.
Also, in 1998 the strength of the Republicans in general declined between September and November. This year, of course, we don’t know which direction people’s party preferences will go in the next couple of months.
Richard @ 27
I don’t think so. Dino Rossi is a very known commodity in this state. He did not do well. I know plenty of Ds who voted for the Diddler, for entertainment value, if nothing else. Plus, you have to consider that those who really wanted either the Diddler or Akers to win are crazy. Predicting that they’ll go for Rossi is not something I’d bet on. Patty did pretty well, given that there was nothing going happening on the D side of the ballot. Dino the Dim doesn’t look so good, if you were to ask me.
@27
Failing to follow up on your own logic, if you add up all the Dems no longer in the race Murray is @ 48.69% (and likely climbing.) So I’ll stick with my statement from last night. Dino will need to have almost zero angry Diddier stay homes and a huge percentage of the small or no preference party to pull it off.
Add in that if vote by mail turns up anywhere close to 50% participation in a primary, participation in the November in heavily Democratic King County makes Dino a big-time longshot.
The scenario might go something like this. Election night, it’s a 46% to 47% spread for Murray. Dino will not concede. Then the mail in ballots postmarked on election day start coming in and it gets to 49% for Murray and Dino starts screaming that King county is commiting fraud simply by not having all the ballots delivered on election day. Then he’ll shout fraud because another big chunk of King County comes in 2 days after the election since the postal service has such a perfect record of deliving mail in one day. Then He’ll scream fraud until sometime in mid-March after Murray has voted on a whole slew of Senate measures. Then he’ll toss his lollypop at someone and take his ball and go pout.
Oh, did I mention that Dino will print up re-elect Rossi, Senate stickers in 2016 and go at it again?
Yeah what #28 said.
I’d be more inclined to call this a horse race if the much ballyhooed, anti-democrat, ant-incumbent, election that the braying heads were predicting had actually shown up.
Speaking of Polls………No wonder the Dems are running for cover
http://www.gallup.com/poll/141.....20Approval
Goldy–
Enthusiasm??
Yes, elections are local…not Federal.
However Democrats lack enthusiasm and it will spill over here.
ObaMao has deflated the Independents..and the Country.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Chris @ 25: These were witnesses called by the Republicans to prove that felons had voted. The Republicans wanted the court to assume whom they might have voted for, based upon where they voted, and subtract from the votes accordingly. Since the Republicans only canvased for felons voting in Gregoire-leaning precincts, they expected the judge to deduct more from her totals than from Rossi’s. Or at the least, they hoped the judge might throw out the entire election.
But the judge was smarter than that, he wasn’t going to assume anything, and he asked the felons accused of voting who they voted for. Most of them were smart enough to assert their right against self-incrimination, and refused to say anything (since it would be admission of illegal voting). But those who didn’t admitted that they voted for Rossi (all but one).
Personally, if a judge orders me to publically declare who I voted for while under oath, I would refuse. There’s a reason for the secret ballot, and I think it would be worth going to jail to protect that right.
From the Real Clear Politics articles referenced @13:
‘1. Chuck spews:
Finally the dead ballots and illegal aliens are rolling in. This should give Murray the boost you libs are looking for!’
Seconded. Don’t forget the ghosts, pets, phantoms, and apparitions. :)
The Libtard mantra: “Vote early and vote often!”
Mark! @ 36: After a string of posts which DISPROVE that Democrats were responsible for any illegal voting, you then just repeat the already-proven false mantra?
Isn’t it embarrasing to be publically wrong so much of the time?
36 – The wingnut mantra:
Deny reality at all costs (see a fool like Didier)
and
Keep trying the same thing expecting different results, i.e. damn right we’re insane!
@37: They cannot be embarrassed. Repetition is a feature and not a bug.
@37 No, he’s not embarrassed. He’s a liar. He repeats his lies no matter how times he’s been corrected. In this way, he’s no different than the rest of the trolls. But I’ll say this for Mark, at least he gets to the point. He repeats the lie and moves on, unlike, say, Lost and Klynical, who insist on sharing their NPD with us.
This just in–
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Based on the Primary results, I think this poll is mighty close.
Rossi has his work cut out for him
He needs the Tea Party Activists in order to get elected.
This next week is critical for Rossi.
Murray is throwing around OUR money courtesy of the credit card (aka National Debt).
She is running around with lots of handouts.
Rossi needs to challenge her on where that money is coming from and how will she pay it back!
Rossi/Didier/Akers==48.4%
Murray==46.3%
By the time all the votes are counted…this should be about even.
It will ultimately be about turnout.
IF Murray finds a way to excite lefty’s, she will win.
If not and if Rossi ties in to the Tea Party platform…he will edge it out.
“jesusownbutthole…mr. cynical” conveniently forgets the Dino-Sore’s “ick” factor with Washington voters.
He’s toast and so are you asshole.
heh- You can just feel the love for Rossi over at the Reagan Wing.
http://thereaganwing.wordpress.....#more-9647
Wow…they fukkin hate him over there.
Nice.
Good catch, Steve (as usual)
@35
Yep! So much for the anti-incumbent surge. I told everyone this would be a status quo election.
Michael–
How do you see this as a big win for Murray?
Rossi/Didier/Akers==48.4%
Murray==46.3%
Granted the R’s had a slightly competitive race but do you think the Didier/Akers voters are going to vote for Murray?
Based on what?
I agree with Rasmussen. Murray is probably 4 points ahead. Hardly a lock.