Local News

Happy Day Before Turkey Day.

One for the number nerds: Amid all the pre-election surmising about which Washington counties might have the highest — highest! — turnout, one expert in the Secretary of State’s office quipped that with marijuana legalization on the ballot, a good bet is that voters in Jefferson and San Juan counties’ woulds turn out in big numbers. No such wager occurred. But spokesman David Ammons had it right.  Now that much of the ballot counting is over — OK, we take forever — the two counties with the biggest turnout percentage were, drum roll, San Juan County, with 88.53 percent, and Jefferson County, with 88.09 percent. The much-vaunted King County turnout, so far anyway, is less than anticipated, 81.95 percent.

Pierce County voting
in 2012 governor’s race
Source: The News Tribune

Pierce County voting habits: Political observers in recent years have been noticing that Pierce County voting has been trending a bit more conservative. The county was once bluer, as in, more Democratic, and more dominated by voters living in Tacoma. But the county is changing and growing. The News Tribune of Tacoma  posted a cool graphic showing the voting in the 2012 governor’s race and allowed us to post it in the blog.

Nate Silver makes Doonesbury comic status: New York Times numbers whiz Nate Silver, who predicted the 2012 election with amazing accuracy, has achieved a milestone. He was mentioned in a Doonesbury comic. He’s a young man but it’s one of those things you hope to do before you check out, or so Silver tweeted this week.

Republican misgivings: In the weeks leading up to the election, former Washington State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance was convinced Republicans were going to do better in Washington state in the 2012 election. Then they didn’t. Here is his post-election analysis for Crosscut.com, in which he says Democrats voted and a lot of Republicans stayed home.

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Democrat Jay Inslee slightly increased his lead in the governor’s race in updated vote tallies released Thursday afternoon, further complicating Republican Rob McKenna’s path to victory.

Inslee led McKenna statewide by 56,849 votes out of nearly 2.3 million ballots counted as of 5:15 p.m. Thursday — a lead of 51.2 percent to 48.8 percent.

Wednesday, Inslee was leading by about 49,000 votes and with 51.1 percent of the total counted.

In vote-rich King County, McKenna got 39.5 percent of the roughly 74,000 votes released Thursday. That’s somewhat better than he did among the votes in the original batch counted on election night but slightly worse than his share of the votes reported Wednesday.

King County is planning another vote dump of at least 25,000 ballots at 8:30  p.m.

In Pierce and Snohomish counties, which are often considered bellwether areas, McKenna performed slightly better than he had Tuesday and Wednesday. He got 52.4 percent of the Pierce vote (up from 50.6 percent Wednesday) and 51.5 percent of the Snohomish vote (up from 50.4 percent Wednesday. Overall, McKenna narrowly led in Pierce but trailed in Snohomish.

Nearly 600,000 ballots still remain to be counted.

As he has in the past, McKenna campaign manager Randy Pepple insisted that the math was still feasible for McKenna to win. In a video released just after King County’s updated totals were announced, Pepple sketched out the math McKenna is counting on to win.

Video: McKenna campaign manager Randy Pepple talks about the results in the Washington state governor’s race.

Staff reporter Justin Mayo contributed to this report.