This is a weird story in the P-I. If everything turns out pretty much like 2004, and not as many people vote in the Puget Sound region as elsewhere, Rossi will indeed win. Or whatever the point was.
I’m not saying the story should not have been written, it’s just kind of odd to speculate and then use the word “analysis” about what might happen based on how many ballots have already come back in vote by mail counties. It would have been more straightforward to just discuss the likely turnout in different counties while noting briefly who won those counties in 2004.
If you go to say, Pollster.com and gaze at polls in the Washington gubernatorial race long enough, you might conclude that the race is a statistical dead heat.
Another factor to speculate about would be the effect of cell phones on polling data. I honestly don’t know how to gauge that, and I especially don’t know how to gauge that in the governor’s race. That could break either way.
Both campaigns seem to have large turnout operations, according to the traditional media. My crystal ball is down at the music shop having “God Bless the USA” installed to replace “The Internationale,” but the race for governor really does seem to close to call.
Since I’m down here in Clark County, I’ll leave the speculating about the Puget Sound region to those who know that area better. Since Clark County is often mentioned as a key part of any Rossi victory scenario, I’d just point out that Rossi only received 52.75% of the vote here in 2004, hardly a huge margin and very similar to the amount George W. Bush received.
It’s hard for me to imagine how Rossi could do much better this year with an incredibly unpopular national Republican ticket. A narrow Gregoire victory in Clark County, as normal people realize she is a steady and qualified governor in tough times, wouldn’t surprise me either. Remember, we don’t live in your Puget Sound media universe. People here call the elections office asking why Gordon Smith isn’t on their ballot. I kid you not.
Sure, the Rossi forces attacked Gregoire relentlessly for a thought crime about an income tax, but that factually flimsy if politically effective charge should be offset by Democratic enthusiasm. But I’m just speculating.
And if you believe what you read here, we’re not going to know the outcome tomorrow night anyhow.
Gregoire wins statewide 53-46-1! Or not!
Seriously flawed article. Failed to calculate the affect of poll voters on overall turnout in Pierce and King- that is almost criminally incomplete. Furthermore, the rule of thumb always calls for more than 60% of the votes to come in during the last 96 hours. We have no real idea how many came in and are not checked in as having been received in King and Pierce Co.
The only point of this article is to point out that we have an amazing early vote everywhere, and are headed for a record shattering turnout.
Lets go squeeze out every vote.
The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington’s only daily) does a terrible job reporting on politics. I seriously doubt many voters in Clark County are aware of the lawsuit involving dino and the biaw.
In 2004 the King County democratic vote was substantially suppressed as a result of several factors not in play this time. Chief among these is that the KC Council passed the critical areas ordinance ten days or so before the election. This new law passed by a Democrat dominated council in a county with a democratic executive crystallized the future for rural land owners, and for about 30 days caused anger and confusion. This had a clear and wide spread effect across eastern, western and southern King county. Second was the effect in King County remaining from Ron Sims loss in the primary and the fact little was done to unite the party after his loss. One result of this was the fact that over 1000 write in votes were cast for Sims in King County alone. The third factor was the relationship on the ballot between Dave Ross who ran in the 8th and Dino Rossi who’s name came immediately after Dave’s on 50% of the ballots. This was the cause of many many overvotes and undervotes.The fourth was the huge amount of cash spent with very harsh negative ads in the Debra Senn and Dave Ross races.
A factor in 2004 effecting the Gregoire race state wide was the campaigns failure to identify Rossi on the issues and in regard to his lacking character.
So while I expect the voter turnout in rural Washington counties will be greater than in 2004, the make up of those “new” voters has not been established and a larger turnout in the three larger counties of King, Snohomish and Pierce should mean more growth in democratic votes.
Thanks above – cogent. Most of us have forgotten a number of the nuances in play last time.
Add the very out pro marriage for gays Lesbian Libertarian who took I think 27,000 votes – yes many from the Sea/KingCo GLBT community who were not as enamored by Gregoire as they are today, having now passed legislation with her help.
The ignorati who like Rossi would vote for him no matter what. The ads accusing Gregoire of coddling sex offenders, repudiated by law enforcement, which lined up behind Gregoire, are likely to backfire on Rossi because they will leave many swing voters thinking he’s a liar. And anyone who arrived in Washington more than a week ago knows there won’t be an income tax and Rossi’s talk about an income tax is silly.
@3 King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties have over 50% of the state’s population and that’s where the election will be decided. A factor you didn’t mention is that in 2004 a gay Libertarian candidate got over 80,000 votes. It’s a safe bet that without the gay candidate on the ballot Gregoire would have got some of those votes. As far as how this election breaks, I think hardly anyone will vote differently than they did in 2004, so this time it’ll be decided by the new voters. According to a recent UW poll, Rossi has a surprising amount of support among young voters, probably because they don’t know much about the candidates or issues. In one focus group, after being told who the candidates were and what they stood for, the group went almost solid for Gregoire. So, Gregoire could get hurt by an information gap among young new voters.
I just checked the SoS’s online archives … Ruth Bennett got 63,464 votes in ’04. (Final certified total after all recounts.)
Y’all are voting (or have voted) yes on I-1029, right?
Yes on I-1029, ’cause granny deserves competent care.
http://www.yeson1029.org/
“I’m not saying the story should not have been written, it’s just kind of odd to speculate and then use the word “analysis” about what might happen based on how many ballots have already come back in vote by mail counties.”
Media speculates daily should not be a surprise.
Media reports are filled with “if, maybe, could and perhaps.
I was wondering what happened to ‘ol Ralph Nader. He hasn’t been mentioned in the polling.
He showed up in an interview on KZOK this morning, arguing that voters should vote for him because Obama was as much in the pocket of the big corporations as McCain. Kindof sad. Like anyone should really take the risk of throwing the election to McCain because Obama isn’t sufficiently to the left of them? We learned that hard lesson in 2000, it’s not likely to be repeated again anytime soon. Nadar’s polling must be miniscule, if he’s left to spending the day before the election appearing on a morning show of a local Seattle rock station. Talk about irrelevance!
On a similar veign, I was wondering how the Republican Party got pushed so far to the neo-con right that it lost all connection with most of America. Then I realized that in quite a few elections before 2000, there were right-wing third-party candidates, such as Wallace, Buchanan, etc., which forced the Republicans to the center in order to pick up votes. But in 2000 and 2004, it was the Nadar/Green Party pealing off just enough votes to deprive the Democrats of the Presidency.
This year, I think third-party candidates will get less than 1% combined. The left is too afraid of the damage which could be done of four more years of McCain/Palin, and the right has scraped together a coalition based primarily on hate/fear of Obama.
For both parties, this election is more about fear of the other side winning than it is being “for” their own candidate.
@10
I think there might be sizable number of republicans voting for Bob Barr… *A Lot* of my republican friends and colleagues who are fiscally conservative but socially laissez-faire, are not going to vote for McCain because he’s pandered too much to the religious right and frankly, because he picked Palin.. I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised to see more than a few votes go to Mr. Barr.
Over the last two weeks, AOL has usually had a headline news item about how McCain is closing the gap, or “McCain’s Roadmap to Victory”, or something similar. The articles pointed out that McCain had an uphill battle to win the Presidency, but assured readers that it was possible, and reminded them of his comeback after the 2000 primary defeat and the early 2008 near-collapse of his campaign in the primaries.
Yesterday and today, I didn’t see anything similar. Today there was an article speculating how the new President, whether it be Obama or McCain, would re-decorate the family living quarters of the White House.
“Today there was an article speculating how the new President, whether it be Obama or McCain, would re-decorate the family living quarters of the White House.”
I’d expect either one to do that. It’s usually done anyway, in in this case….well, Texans (even fake ones) aren’t exactly known for subtlety and good taste in home decoration.