I’m not exactly calling the State Supreme Court race between incumbent Justice Richard Sanders and challenger Charlie Wiggins, because the “Ballots on Hand” data on the Secretary of State’s website is always just a rough estimate, but if you dump the county-by-county returns into a spreadsheet and project current margins against the estimated remaining ballots, of which nearly 53% are in King County, Wiggins comes out on top by about 5,600 votes.
I guess getting his crazy on during the final days of the campaign didn’t work out too well for Sanders.
Keep in mind that the “Ballots on Hand” numbers are notorious for fluctuating wildly, though they tend to become more reliable the further along we are in the counting process, so it’s certainly possible the data is incomplete, or even wrong. That said, my calculations merely average margins across the accumulated vote, and thus don’t account for the obvious trend toward Wiggins amongst late voters, so it’s very likely that his ultimate margin of victory will be even larger.
(If anybody has archived the county-by-county totals from election night, I’d be happy to work that into my spreadsheet. Overall we’ve seen about a 2 point swing in Wiggins favor statewide in the post-Tuesday count, which averaged across the counties would suggest a final 9,300 vote margin.)
Either way, and despite the fact he currently trails Sanders by over 13,000 votes, the smart money has gotta be on Wiggins.
and lo and behold, the sanders campaign is already sending out e mails with captions about Wiggins “stealing” the election…..
1. um, obviously they’re worried as hell.
2. they will say anything, won’t they?
talk @1,
Please forward me the email, goldy at horsesass.org.
Goldy –
I’ll forward you my spreadsheet, which includes two different estimates, and the election night numbers, putting Wiggins up in any possible scenario. There is literally no statistical way that Sanders can win. The Stranger and the Times did good here.
some say sanders plans to challenge all ballots counted by african american workers.
Charlie got my vote. Richard Sanders is a horse’s ass, to borrow a phrase.
Big Bad Liberal Seattle can add another Republican scalp to our collection. What a pity that we didn’t have our shit together in the primary and let Jim Johnson get away.
Slade Gorton in 2000
Dino Rossi in 2004 (will he run against Cantwell in 2012?)
Doug Sutherland in 2008
Richard Sanders in 2010
Supporting multiple girl friends can be expensive. Sanders may have to work a couple of jobs if he gets kicked of the SC. Let us Hope.
@7…
BIAW’s hiring…
Yeah, letting Indian-hater Johnson slide unopposed into another 6-year term is a travesty. Why did we let that happen?
I voted for Wiggins.
@9 Well I voted for Stan in August, but there were only two in the race and Jim won.
@9-11: Sadly, we need to find a good justice with a common last name. Pretty clearly, Johnson got elected because the other guy’s name was “complicated” (aka furrin’ and weird).
Only about 75 % of voters vote in the Supreme Court race, so you need to adjust for that.
Yeah, I was about to post what 13 did. These sort of projections need to take into account the unusually large undervote that occurs in these sorts of races.
@6: big, bad liberal Seattle? How about the law enforcement community? 30 of 39 county prosecutors and a crapload of law enforcement organizations endorsed Wiggins. Sanders is absolutely hated by cops, who aren’t exactly a bunch of flaming liberals.
If Sanders loses, it’ll be because he pissed off people on both sides of the political spectrum.
The lede story in the print edition of today’s Republican Times says state government is facing another $4.2 billion of cuts in the next biennium, and quotes Gov. Gregoire as saying it will be an “all cuts” budget.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....et07m.html
At this point, she doesn’t have any choice, but the seeds of this disaster were sown by Gregoire’s failure to provide political leadership on tax reform over the last several years.
I’ve been saying on HA for years, now, that we can’t have a state government capable of providing the public service we need as long as the tax system continues to distribute the bulk of the tax burden to the bottom of the income population.
Gregoire’s failure to address that issue has been disastrous. And as a governor who doesn’t know how to lead, who happens to be in office at a critical time in our state’s history, she has been a disastrous failure.
15
The law enforcement community doesn’t like Sanders because he is very libertarian in his views with regard to criminal law (4th, 5th, 8th Amendment issues, etc.) issues. Perhaps more so than any other current Justice. I will commend him for that. His libertarianism, however, breaks down when he gets out of the criminal arena.
Charlie Wiggins will be a great Justice, the best we’ve had in our state since Robert Utter.
Oh come one Roger. Did you forget this?
Rossi told the world a deficit was looming. Gregoire is living in her just desserts!
Now if you remember some useless tool on HA brought up Texas’ deficit. They predicted it unlike Gregoire in WA State. The problem with Texas is the tax receipts fell more than expected. With Queen Chrissy she hired more and more people.
I-1098 would have taxed 1% of the state’s population and provided modest but tangible tax relief to almost everyone else, but two-thirds of the electorate voted against it. Why? Was the oligarchs’ propaganda effective? Is politics completely irrational with people voting entirely by their gut? Or do Washington voters cut off their own balls simply because they enjoy pain? Or maybe they just enjoy inflicting pain on poor people? Who knows … I can’t explain it. I think I-1098 is a monument to the Irrationality of Voters.
The world isn’t rational, and that’s what makes it so dangerous. Ninety-nine percent of the Confederate soldiers who took up arms to defend secession were too poor to own slaves.
In our country today we have people in trailer parks voting to preserve the special privileges of billionaires.
@18 What’s your point, putz? I’ve never said Washington has a budget deficit. We don’t, and never have had one, and never will.
Hans Zeiger is slipping farther behind Dawn Morrell as more ballots are counted. As of Friday’s 4 pm ballot drop, Morrell had widened her lead from 17 votes on Election Night and 101 votes Thursday to 128 votes currently.
The problem with doing a straight-out projection of ballots on hand against current allocation percentages between Sanders and Wiggins is that it doesn’t take into account two recent trends: (1) some counties have started to see a 2-3% shift in the votes being cast for Sanders vs. Wiggins (in Wiggins’s favor), and (2) across the board, the percentage of ballots in which people are actually voting in this race is decreasingly markedly (for example, King County dropped 5% between Thursday’s totals and the net new ballots counted on Friday). Both of these factors combine to make it very difficult to project the outcome.
For a purely statistical (and generally non-partisan) analysis of the election data in this race thus far, I encourage you to check out my blog: http://sanderswiggins.blogspot.com/.
Too bad we can’t have both of them on the court.
For Sanders supporters, which justice would you like to see Wiggins replace in an ideal world?
For Wiggins supporters, which justice would you like to see Sanders replace in an ideal world?
Richard @ 25,
The division between these two is not the usual partisan divide, as you know. I would have preferred Sanders to either Madsen or Johnson. As opposed to Wiggins, however, I’m with Charlie.
The point which seems the fly right over your head Roger is what you just wrote…
Another Roger Rabbit “willing suspension of disbelief”
Roger can you fill me in on Sander’s decision regarding civil liberties for gays or at least point me to a source for a decent comment on it. I have heard a couple of different and conflicting comments over the last few days and was not aware of any decision relating to that issue. I can only guess that I was out of state when it was handed down. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
BcL
I am with Richard P on this one. While I have tracked this and agree with the scenario of Wiggins winning, and supported Wiggins, we will miss Richard on that court. Too bad Wiggins didn’t beat J. Jpohnson, or too bad Sanders didn’t file against J. Johnson. Next time, we should get former WSBA President, Access to Justice Activist, and a brilliant lawyer, named Mark Johnson to run against him.
Richard made boorish comments but has done more for individual liberties of the accused including for people of color than any other Justice. Jim Johnson is just a total ass who believes his idiotic rantings and supports the plutocracy. We need to get rid of him.
@27: haha – once again Puddy fails to understand what Roger is saying. We can’t have a budget deficit in Washington state because we are legally obligated to balance the budget.
Of course, the budget deficits are PREDICTED because of the Bush depression and our unstable tax structure – but the state must balance the budget – so there will be no “deficits”.
Rossi did not predict budget deficits – they were already predicted – but name a single solution that Rossi offered besides gutting higher education even more?
Once again, Puddy cannot name a single solution – just as he could not name a single concrete republican idea to balance the budget.
@13 When you adjust for the 25% undervote that occurs in the Supreme Court races it turns out much closer. Most likely Wiggins will win but there will be a recount. My spreadsheet says that Wiggins will pick up nearly 14,000 votes. He trails by 13,300 as of now. Did late voters bother to vote the whole ballot as much as early voters did? who knows? I haven’t wasted enough of my time to try to figure that out.
You’ve got to think that by the end of today the race will be pretty much over. That gives six days for ballots to arrive and be processed. Sure, there might be a few overseas ballots trickling in, and I know the military ballots mail system is notoriously slow, but the outcome should be pretty much established by the end of today.
rhp6033 @32:
Agreed. However, it may take King County another day beyond today to count all of these ballots in their queue. By the SoS’s measure, which (in the case of King County) shows only those ballots that have been verified, over half of all not-yet-tallied votes are in King.
It will take King Co a few more days to count whats in their queue. Many ballots with write ins are also put aside and still to be counted. So are provisionals that are being rehabilitated on signature, eligibility, etc. Plus in a race like this, the late trickle is vital to outcomes. This is too close to call.
@18
Um, to the person playing puddy:
Actually the same thing happened to Washington as is happening to Texas. Tax revenues have fallen more than expected. Unfortunately the squeeze on state and local governments tends to set up a positive feedback loop in the local economy as government workers are laid off or have less to spend and as social services are cut curtailing spending by those recieving them.
Wiggins won’t take the lead until tomorrow.
@28 – THE case on equality for gays was Anderson v. King County. There were five hundred different opinions issued, but the winning side centered on two – the Madsen decision, and the Johnson decision.
Madsen reasoned that the gays had not proven themselves to be a suspect class, and since previous case law disallows for the Court to overturn law unless it either is blatantly unconstitutional, or suspect class (Extreme Deference to the legislature), the Court could not overturn DOMA, but that DOMA was stupid, and the Leg should fix it.
The Johnson opinion relied on “facts” that gays are promiscuous, have short term relationships, and are bad for children (along with Vance and Grant County II, which are actually off topic, but whatever).
Sanders signed the Johnson opinion. This year, when asked why, he regularly stated that he didn’t agree with all of the rhetoric (even though the opinion says “we believe” throughout, not “I believe, but Sanders doesn’t), just Vance and GC II. This was interesting, because Sanders LOVES writing his own opinions, yet couldn’t take the time to write a brief concurrence in part and in judgment making that clear in the 15 mos. the Court sat on this case.
He also dissented in two other gay rights cases, one involving whether or not the City of Vancouver could extend benefits to Domestic Partners (he said they couldn’t), and one that had to do with custody issues in a lesbian home that broke apart.
Re 36 Thanks I’ll dig further into it.
Again thank you,
Bcl