Washington Thoughts

Based on current totals Republicans beat Democrats by about 12,000 votes in the Washington Senate race. About 15,000 going to other parties. These could matter, since they can't vote for other parties in November.

Around 34,000 more people voted in the senate race than the congressional races. The congressional votes for third parties were almost triple those in the Senate vote. This isn't surprising. Since a number of the congressional races are unlikely to be competitive, people feel more freedom to vote for a candidate of choice or not at all. Democrats got more votes than Republicans in the congressional races. Overall, however, 41,000 more people voted Republican in the senate race and only 19,000 voted Democratic. It's likely that more people voted for a Democrat for congress, but also voted for a Republican for Senate than vice versa.

This close to the election I doubt you'll see much change in the electorate. It'll likely come down to a few thousand votes and a few mysterious "new" boxes of ballots from Democratic areas.

The Washington primary in 2008 showed only small changes from the primary vote to the general election vote. That year Democrats had around a 215,000 vote advantage in the primary. This year the Democrats only had a few thousand more votes than Republicans. In a normal year, it’d be in the middle. The chart below lists Democratic primary margins in 2008 and 2010

There is no Republican this year in the 7th. The first thing that jumps out at me is that there wasn’t much drop off or even a Democratic gain in the two heavily Republican districts. It’s likely the 3rd has the biggest drop-off because the Democratic incumbent retired. Every other Democratic district had anywhere from a 15% to 21% shift from 2008 to 2010. That’s fairly consistent. Races that were narrow Republican victories in 2008 should be safe. Close losses should go Republican. Races that weren’t close two years ago will be toss-ups. Any Democratic incumbent that didn’t get 60% of the votes in 2008 needs to look in his or her rear view mirror. Competitive open seats like WA-3 could see a larger change.

In Washington, however, that may not be a big deal. They had big victories then. Dave Reichert, WA-8, had a close win last time. He probably has nothing to worry about this time. Jaime Herrera will very likely pick up WA-3 for the Republicans. While WA-2 and WA-9 are close, they aren’t close enough that the GOP could steal those also. Most of the forecasters didn’t have these two districts on their lists anyway.