Yeah, I called the Washington US Senate race for Patty Murray on election night, just minutes after the first round of King County results was released, and I called WA-02 for incumbent Rep. Rick Larsen last Thursday, when he was still leading by only 1,451 votes. But in my boldest prediction yet, I’m sticking my neck out and projecting that the rest of the media will call WA-02 for Larsen sometime between 4:30 and 7:00 PM today.
The problem for Tea Party challenger John Koster is that even if the remaining ballots shift dramatically in his direction (and they won’t), there just aren’t enough ballots remaining for him to overcome Larsen’s 3,841 vote lead. Yeah, there’re still 30,000 ballots in Snohomish County, where Koster still leads by a 1.74% margin, but only about 47% of those are in WA-02. Koster would now have to garner over 54.5% of the estimated 42,000 or so ballots remaining district wide to surpass Larsen… a target that will only jump impossibly higher after today’s returns.
So yeah, the media will finally call this one for Larsen by the end of the day, after absurdly stretching the fiction of an undecided race for an extra three or four days.
Breaking News … The media is more prudent than bloggers!
“The problem for Tea Party challenger John Koster is”
that his angry-white-guy-spouting-Rovian- horsecrap act didn’t play all that well in an area where voters are above average in intelligence.
Troll @1,
Or… maybe the media is invested in a narrative in that drags these things out.
As I said in an earlier post, there will be no reason not to call this race once the reports come in today. There simply can’t be very many ballots still in the mail system which were properly postmarked by Nov. 2nd.
The only question now is whether Larsen can maintain the 2,000 vote lead he needs to avoid a mandatory recount. If he does, then that puts Kostner in the position of having to pay – up front – for any recount.
Math is hard.
If only there were some free market solution.
Of course in addition to the MSM missing spreadsheet skills, we have the challenger who has yet to figure out he lost and have the good sense and patriotic sense of duty to concede.
Troll @#1,
BS
Guess Koster should have manned up when he found out big bad Jerry Cornfield was on the debate panel.
I’m sure that KIRO-TV has been beating this one into the ground. However, I wouldn’t know because KIRO completely lost its credibility with me during this election. I already know not to trust Belo (KING & NWCN), so I started monitoring KOMO and KCPQ and if they are trying to shade then news, they are too subtle for me. OTOH, I’m sure that this election did wonders for KIRO’s bottom line.
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
“HA HA HA HA HA”
Oh, oh, another psycho-laugh.
Steve,
What is it with trolls and their psycho-laughs? What are they trying to communicate to us? We know that trolls have no sense of humor, so their references to “uncontrollable laughter” must be code for something in Troll World.
Goldy right KING calls it
Kudos, Rick, for knocking off the nutcase Koster. He has about as much by way of qualification to rule at the national level as my dog does. Now, mind you, my dog is pretty smart. She is, nonetheless, a dog. I would say, however, that she is far better company than is John Koster. Let’s hope he goes away now.