Although it's a national holiday, one county reported a new vote tally to the state elections office this afternoon. Whitman County is, by east-of-the-mountains standards, a fairly moderate place. That's probably because it contains Pullman, home of Washington State University. Even a cow college [yes, I expect to hear from Cougar boosters] must have at least a few Democrats among its faculty, staff, and students.
The county submitted 935 newly-tallied ballots. Among them were 380 Gregoire voters, 474 Rossi voters, and 30 Bennett voters (51 people either left the "Governor" setion blank or wrote in some other name). Based on the total vote count for the three named candidates, that comes to 43.0% for the Democrat, 53.6% for the Republican, 3.4% for the Libertarian. Both Gregoire and Rossi got fewer votes than would have been expected from previously-counted votes in the county, while Bennett garnered an appreciably higher percentage than her earlier pace. For the record, through yesterday the respective Whitman County percentages for the three candidates were 43.8%, 53.9%, and 2.3%.
On Wednesday Whitman County estimated that there were 1000 more votes to be tallied. After reporting on 935 ballots Thursday, the county still says it has 1000 more votes to count. Along with the increased margin resulting from the new tally, this number of uncounted votes contributes to a further increase in the projected margin for Dino Rossi over Christine Gregoire.
As of Thursday evening, Rossi's actual lead stands at 3586 votes, 94 more than last night. My projection now shows his expected final advantage as 4495 votes, also 94 more than the night before.
On Friday, the state expects to receive updates from some 23 of the 39 counties. Five of the seven counties where Gregoire holds the lead are due to report; among those five is King County.