Is it just me, or have the media been timid about calling races won by Dems and bullish about calling those won by Repugs?
Case in point is Washington State, where last night the national media called the 3rd Congressional district for incumbent Jamie Herrera-Beutler (R) with ~4.7% lead, but didn’t call the 8th for Dr. Kim Schrier (D) with ~5.8%.
With our vote-by-mail system and rather slow ballot count, it is known that results tend to “drift” for several days. But historically the drift has been usually to the left, not to the right, particularly in Greater Seattle where most of Schrier’s new constituents live.
I understand the wish not to be rash. I too would wait at least one day, to see where the Wednesday returns lead the drift towards. But then, why be rash about WA-03? Either call both, or refrain from calling both.
Okay, enough ranting. Wednesday returns are in for WA-08, and Representative-Elect Schrier’s lead has increased from 11,600 votes to 12,600 votes, remaining around 5.8% in terms of proportion. there’s a slight quirk since reporting is by county and 3 small counties won’t report till Friday. But IMHJ it’s impossible for Rossi (R-Loser) to even get close to closing the gap. Here’s the map and below it some more explanations.
The 8th is the most gerrymandered district in Washington. Why did Dems agree? Perhaps 11-D chess :)The 8th District is WA’s second-newest, introduced in 1980s as a Suburbia district, which at the time meant red with purplish hues. It had never elected a Democrat to Congress. But as the population and its views around Seattle grew and morphed, our Suburbia has become purplish blue. In the 2010 redistricting WA gained another district, and in the bipartisan (i.e., horse-trading) commission Dems agreed to make WA-08 redder again, by chopping off some of the suburb parts (the more left-leaning ones) and stretching east across the Pacific Crest divide into semi-arid and deep-red Central Washington. It still went for Obama in 2012 and Clinton in 2016, but outgoing Rep. Reichert (R-Phony) had far less trouble keeping his seat than earlier.
Aaaanyway, this means we’re tallying votes from 5 counties. Sounds a lot, but King (Seattle’s county) accounts for two-thirds of WA-08 voters. Schrier is winning King 58-42, and if historical trends hold, the margin will increase somewhat. 3 of the other 4 counties have Rossi winning by a near-mirror-image 56-44 or 57-43. Only the smallest county (Douglas, it’s only a sliver of that county) is 62-38 Rossi.
Today King and Pierce (together >80% of the district’s voters) both reported and nothing moved. The 3 small counties will report Friday, but there’s no way the Rossi margin there will accumulate to the 12-15k votes needed to overcome what will be the situation then. The votes remaining are fewer than those already counted, and even now these 3 counties only combine for a <5k Rossi margin.
Schrier has won.
Meanwhile, the main counties in WA-03 have also submitted their Wednesday tallies: R advantage increased to 5.2%, so it’s over there too. It seems that Clark County (Vancouver WA, a Portland suburb), the only county won by challenger Carolyn Long (D), does not follow King’s trend: like in the primaries a few months ago, it’s actually drifting R over time.
Well, I’ll take the one pickup over none. And this was Herrera-Beutler’s first competitive race since the redistricting (which made WA-03, too, purple-red; these are the only two districts that cross the mountains). Thank you Prof. Carolyn Long for laying the groundwork. Who knows, we may pick up WA-03 in 2020.
-----— 10 PM UPDATE:
So, I guess KING-5 TV reads Daily Kos, because 2 minutes after I posted this they tweeted that according to their analysis they are calling WA-08 blue…. and less than an hour later Dino Rossi conceded. Read The Stranger’s (Seattle’s alt-weekly) delicious schadenfreude.