Of course, Susan Hutchison lost big last night, as did Tim Eyman. And I suppose every candidate who didn’t come out on top probably feels that they lost big too. But I’d say the biggest loser last night was the Seattle Times editorial board, considering the woeful track record of its endorsed candidates within the city whose name the paper misappropriates.

In fact, you gotta wonder if a lot of Seattle voters don’t take a look at the Times’ top of the ticket endorsements, and just vote the opposite.

In contested countywide races, the Times bizarrely endorses Susan Hutchison, only to see Dow Constantine cruise to a double-digit victory. Meanwhile, Graham Albertini, the Times’ preferred candidate in the Assessor’s race, comes in a distant third. Ouch. And in Seattle races, the Times may actually soon challenge the folks at (u)SP for the title of Endorsement Kiss of Death.

Yeah, sure, the Times endorsed city council winners in Richard Conlin and Sally Bagshaw, but he ran unopposed, and nobody expected the Bagshaw vs. Bloom race to be close. The same cannot be said of the Rosencrantz/O’Brien race, where the former turned the Times prominent endorsement into a surprising 16-point deficit. And then there’s poor Jesse Israel, for whom a number of people told me they seriously considered voting, only to be turned off by her Times endorsement and her perceived run to the right. What some expected to be the upset of the evening turned into your run-of-the-mill 16-point win for incumbent Nick Licata.

And of course there’s the mayor’s race, where Joe Mallahan’s Times endorsed coronation appears to have been waylaid by Mike McGinn’s grassroots activism.

Compare that track record to, say, The Stranger’s candidate endorsements, which saw a clean sweep in the races above with the possible exception of King County Assessor, where Lloyd Hara currently leads their preferred Bob Rosenberger by a small but significant margin.

Considering which paper appears more in touch with the values of Seattle voters, perhaps the two publications should just swap mastheads?

A few days ago Joe Mallahan was that business guy who was about to become mayor after spending gobs of his own cash. Kinda Seattle’s version of Michael Bloomberg, but without all that Bloomberg money.

But this morning Mallahan is just that business guy who spent gobs of his own cash. Or as our friend Will pointed out last night, kinda Seattle’s version of Michael Huffington, but without the blowing guys part. (So far as we know.)

And if this seems like I’m predicting a Mike McGinn victory based on a slim one-percent lead with about 60-percent of the ballots still outstanding, well, I guess I am. Not nearly as confidently as I’m predicting an R-71 victory, and certainly not for the same reasons. But if I were Mallahan I’d be preparing to reacquaint myself with obscurity.

My reasoning? First, if the polls can be believed, the undecideds appeared to break in McGinn’s favor during the final week of the campaign, suggesting that late votes will favor McGinn by an even stronger margin than those reported last night, all of which had been received as of 5PM Friday. Second, and perhaps even more important, McGinn appears to have engineered the most impressive, grassroots get out the vote campaign this city has seen in some time.

On the other hand, I’ve heard from the Constantine campaign that they had the sense the late vote was trending a bit more conservative, and that they wouldn’t be surprised to see Hutchison slightly narrow the gap as the votes are tallied, but I’m not sure the same dynamics apply to the mayor’s race, which was widely understood to pit a Democrat against a Democrat. Hutchison may have successfully tagged Constantine a bit with her ridiculous claim that he was responsible for Boeing setting up shop in South Carolina, but that issue simply didn’t play in the McGinn vs. Mallahan contest.

We won’t really know if a trend toward McGinn holds true until after tomorrow’s ballot drop (this afternoon’s drop will largely be from the same batch as yesterday’s), but for the moment at least, I’m sticking with my thesis that McGinn wins.

Yeah, I know, only a fool or a liar would claim to know the outcome of a race this close, but there’s no glory in making a prediction after most of the results are in.

Of all the “too close to call” races this election, the easiest to call is R-71, which reaffirms the “Everything But Marriage” bill that passed the legislature last session.

Election night results have the measure passing by a mere 2 percent of the vote, a margin well within the swing that routinely occurs during Washington’s weeks long ballot counting process. But I have damn good reason to believe that R-71’s margin will significantly expand, not shrink as the ballots are tallied.

I base this assumption on the disproportionate number of ballots left to be counted in populous King County, which so far has voted 61 percent in favor of the measure, versus the ballots remaining in the 29 counties that voted against it. As of 8:15 pm last night, King had counted only 23.55% of registered voters, but projects a final turnout of 56%. The other 38 counties have thus far tallied 30.66% of voters, with a statewide turnout projected to top out at around 51%.

Punch the current numbers through a spreadsheet, play around with turnout rates, and any way you run it, R-71’s margin of victory expands. That is, assuming late voters didn’t dramatically trend toward the No side of the ballot… a trend for which there is absolutely no evidence.

My educated guess? R-71 passes by a comfortable 4 to 6 point margin.

UPDATE:
The folks at the Washington Poll run pretty much the same spreadsheet, and come up with pretty much the same numbers.

Susan Hutchison refused to concede the King County executive race last night, despite trailing Dow Constantine by a better than 14-point margin, because apparently the only poll that really counts was the one conducted by KING-5/SurveyUSA… on October 12.

Told in an earlier interview that Dow Constantine had already declared victory, she looked startled and asked, “Is that right?” … She said she was confident waiting is the best course. “Things have changed historically in the last five days. It is just too early to tell.”

Uh-huh. Perhaps where Suzie went to school they were too busy studying Intelligent Design to learn any math, so let me run the numbers for her.

King County Elections issued 1,079,842 ballots for yesterday’s election, and ultimately projects about 600,000 ballots returned for a 56% turnout. Yesterday a total of 254,261 ballots were tallied, giving Constantine a 34,879 vote edge.

Subtract the ballots counted from the turnout expected, and that leaves about 350,000 ballots remaining. Divide Constantine’s current cushion by the ballots outstanding, and you find that Hutchison would need to win about 55% of the remaining vote to slip into the lead. Even that Oct. 12 KING-5 poll that seemed to convince her she was going to win, only had Hutchison up five points.

Think about that. Hutchison is down 14 points after the first 250K ballots, but is hoping to be up 10 points in the remaining 350K… a miraculous 24-point swing. But in her own words, “It is just too early to tell.”

If this is the type of rational, mathematical skill Hutchison would have brought to the budgeting process — you know, hoping for miracles — then it looks like 57% of voters made the right choice.

Dear Mikes,

Yeah, sure, I was kinda hard on the two of you during the primary (particularly Mike), but it’s the general election that counts, so no hard feelings, right? After all, I ultimately voted for both of you, and wrote about it (Mike and Mike), and really, what more can you ask from a blogger?

So… um… I assume I can expect the two of you to maintain that secret, city hall slush fund Mayor Nickels established a few years ago to help fund my smear campaigns while shielding him from scrutiny? $2000 cash, slipped to me once a month at Drinking Liberally, and we’ll be cool.

Best of luck running the city. I look forward to destroying your enemies.

Goldy

Real quick, it looks like America’s Vancouver may wind up with a new mayor.

City Councilman Tim Leavitt held a 1,750 lead over incumbent Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard after initial ballots were counted Tuesday evening.

With perhaps 7,000 ballots left to be tallied in the coming days, it may be some time before we know the winner.

Yeah, I don’t know. That would be a lot to make up. Might be time for everyone to begin resigning themselves to the existing I-5 spans over the Columbia. We’ll see if there’s any movement in the election numbers as the days go by.

Tim Eyman's government limiting I-1033, Nov. 2009

Tim Eyman's government limiting I-960, Nov. 2007

I’m going to spend a lot of time over the next few days talking about trends, and what that predicts for the handful of close races in today’s election, but the maps above clearly illustrate what I believe to be one of the most gratifying trends demonstrated by voters today.

The maps above show the county-by-county vote for initiatives 1033 and 960 respectively, the green representing counties that voted yes, and the yellow counties that voted no. I-960 passed in 34 of 39 counties back in November of 2007, by a statewide margin of 51.2% to 48.8%. I-1033 is on its way to losing in 21 counties by a statewide margin of 55.5% to 45.5%.

Both initiatives professed to limit government spending. Both initiatives ran during off-year elections. Both initiatives were sponsored by Tim Eyman.

As I wrote earlier today:

One would think this same libertarian streak would bode well for Tim Eyman’s government drowning I-1033, but this is where personal self-interest comes into play. For as much as rural Washingtonians bask in their self-image of rugged independence, their limited tax base leaves them more dependent on state tax dollars than more populous regions of the state, and thus their communities would be disproportionately impacted by the inevitable cuts in state spending I-1033 would necessitate over time.

Already struggling to meet basic needs, I-1033 has received little support from local elected officials, even Republicans. And local voters are swayed by their local leaders.

Democrats in general and progressives in particular need to take advantage of the awareness that Eyman helped create in traditionally government-hostile areas of the state, about the central role that government plays in improving our quality of life.

Early results are coming in on the statewide ballot measures, and it doesn’t look good for Tim Eyman.  In Spokane, Lewis, Franklin and Island counties, I-1033 is performing dramatically worse than Eyman’s I-960 did in 2007. Based on even these early results, I’m ready to call it.  I-1033 loses.

UPDATE (8:15):
King County reports. With 23.5% reporting (I’m guessing, about 60% of the eventual total), Dow Constantine leads Susan Hutchison by a commanding 57-43 margin. That’s toast.

UPDATE (8:26):
Just to put turnout in perspective, King County has reported about 254,000 ballots counted thus far. Unofficially, I’m told that there were 350,000 ballots in hand as of Friday at 5PM, and that elections projects about 650,000 ballots to be counted over all. So there are a lot more ballots left to count in King. Keep that in mind when considering close races, and particularly R-71.

UPDATE (8:36):
Given my previous comments about King County, knowing that the ballots reported thus far are solely from batches received by Friday, and seeing as the polls appear to have trended toward McGinn, I tend to believe that his slim 50-49 percent lead over Joe Mallahan will not only hold up, but expand.

UPDATE (8:50):
I-1033 is getting its ass kicked. In Eastern Washington. Lincoln, Spokane, Garfield, Columbia, Asotin, Whitman, Adams, Walla Walla and Kittitas counties have all gone No on I-1033, some of them by pretty impressive margins. I’m looking pretty prescient right about now, huh?

UPDATE (9:33):
With all the counties reporting something, R-71 is up 51.1 to 48.9. But looking at the turnout figures on the SOS’s website, I’m pretty confident it will expand its lead by a couple points.

With Republican Bob McDonnell winning big in Virginia, and incumbent Democratic Gov. John Corzine apparently headed to defeat in New Jersey, Republicans are loudly pitching the election as a referendum on President Barack Obama.

Well, uh, not so much…

Chuck Todd reports that Barack Obama’s approval rating among Virginia voters stands at 51 percent (just under the 52.6 percent of the vote he received in the state last November) and 57 percent in New Jersey (almost exactly the same as the 57.1 percent of the vote he earned in that state last November). In other words, exit polling indicates President Obama has not really lost supporters over the past year.

Apparently, exit polls in both Virginia and New Jersey both have voters denying that their vote had anything to do with Obama. But, you know, if that’s what it takes for goopers to get themselves through the day, more power to ’em.

It’s election night! So drop off those ballots and then join us for some electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or show up early and dine liberally.

Some say tonight is lady’s night at DL…guys will be buying the drinks…especially for attractive gals dressed in red. It’ll be absolutely scandalous!

Not in Seattle? With 340 other chapters of Drinking Liberally, there is sure to be one around your corner.

Goldy votes at the King County accessible voting center in Tukwila

The Seattle Times’ Bruce Ramsey thinks “lazy people” shouldn’t vote:

For the past 30 years I voted at a neighborhood church. As years went on, more people I knew were voting absentee, though they weren’t absent from the city. They were just absent from the polling station.

Lazy people. I thought it was a bad idea to make it easy for lazy people to vote.

Right. And it’s urban liberals like me who are accused of being elitist.

Like Ramsey, I too prefer the communal experience of going to the polls over the private clerical task of filling out and mailing in an absentee bailout. So much so, that I chose to drive down to King County’s “accessible voting center” in Tukwila today, to check out the touch screen voting machines, and cast my ballot in person. The service was fast and friendly, and I found the printed receipt reassuring, though the machines were considerably less intuitive than a paper ballot.  During my ten minutes there I saw two elderly voters ask for help.

But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, if Ramsey is such a dedicated poll voter, he too could have chosen to back up his words with action, and vote in person. But I guess he was too busy. Or lazy. Or whatever.

Still, it’s not really for me to judge Ramsey’s preferred method of voting, and certainly not for me to suggest that it’s a bad idea to let people like him vote, just because they’re unwilling or unable to put the same amount of effort into the process as I do.

I’m just sayin’….

“The fact that an idea is proven as a disaster doesn’t mean it dies in American politics. One of the perverse things of our federal system is that there’s dozens of states that the advocates of these kinda lunatic measures can continue to funnel money into to try to get them on the ballot.

Basically, to get things on the ballot you just need enough money to get the paid signature gatherers in the state to qualify for these ballot measures, and so as a result, if you’ve got a fringe group of kinda anti-tax radicals, even when you’ve seen it gut a state like Colorado on health care, on education, so much more, they can get this stuff on the ballot and bring it to a vote.”
— Matt Miller

I’m cautiously optimistic about this year’s two statewide ballot measures, expecting R-71 to pass, and I-1033 to fail, but when the numbers start coming in shortly after 8PM, I’ll be paying particular attention to the county-by-county results.

There’s little doubt that King County, with about a third of the state’s electorate, will vote overwhelmingly pro-gay and anti-Eyman, as will several other reliably liberal counties. So if the early numbers are even remotely close, it will be the results from the other side of the mountains that could provide the best predictor of the final outcome.

I simply don’t expect R-71 to lose big enough where it needs to lose big if the measure is to be defeated, thanks in large part to the strong libertarian streak that defines the western states. I’m not saying that Central and Eastern Washington aren’t majority conservative, just that there isn’t an overwhelming majority of conservatives out there who are particularly interested in denying rights to gays and lesbians. They may not like gays, and they certainly wouldn’t want their children to become one. But their lives are their lives, and all that.

One would think this same libertarian streak would bode well for Tim Eyman’s government drowning I-1033, but this is where personal self-interest comes into play. For as much as rural Washingtonians bask in their self-image of rugged independence, their limited tax base leaves them more dependent on state tax dollars than more populous regions of the state, and thus their communities would be disproportionately impacted by the inevitable cuts in state spending I-1033 would necessitate over time.

Already struggling to meet basic needs, I-1033 has received little support from local elected officials, even Republicans. And local voters are swayed by their local leaders.

So while I expect I-1033 to pass in the vast majority of counties, I don’t expect it to pass by nearly a large enough margin to offset its loss in King County.  I’ll be looking to counties like Yakima, Chelan, Spokane and Benton as early bell-weathers for the other side of the state, comparing their results to that of 2007’s I-960. Here on our side of the mountains I’ll be paying close attention to populist Snohomish and Clark counties in anticipation of a possible shift onto the anti-Eyman side of the ledger.

I’d like to believe that there is less of an East/West divide than there’s often made out to be. And I’m cautiously optimistic that tonight’s election results will bear this out.

I was driving along Rainier AVE yesterday, when I saw Joel Connelly. On the side of a bus.

Apart from being a tad distracting to see a larger than life Joel staring back at me from the side of a bus, it was interesting to see that the P-I online is A) actually spending money promoting the product, and B) promoting open and honest “bias” as a selling point.

Looks like Hearst may be wrapping its collective mind around the new medium.