In an
earlier diary today, I suggested that Dino Rossi (R) would move past Christine Gregoire (D) in the very tight count of votes for Washington governor. Seventeen counties, in all of which Rossi was leading, were supposed to report today. In fact, 16 counties reported their counts today, including one (San Juan) of the eight in which Gregoire leads.
Overall, Rossi picked up 10,859 more votes today than did Gregoire. He currently leads the race by 2123 votes, out of nearly 2.7 million tallied so far.
Although the change of lead was entirely predictable, analysis of the day's votes and the reported uncounted ballots in each county indicates that Gregoire's chances for an eventual victory have taken a serious hit. Tonight's spreadsheet shows an estimated Rossi win by 3097 votes.
In every single county reporting an updated vote tally today, Gregoire's percentage of the new votes was lower than she had recorded in the previous balloting. For example, through Monday she trailed Rossi in Clallam County, 45.6% to 52.0%. Among the 5044 votes added to the Clallam County total on Tuesday, however, Rossi got 54.4% to Gregoire's 41.9%. In four of those 16 counties, Rossi's overall percentage also fell (ever so slightly), with the Libertarian candidate gaining at the expense of both major candidates.
In addition, three counties appear to have overestimated how many more ballots remained to be counted. Thus, on Monday, Kitsap County said that it still had to look at 14,000 ballots. After tallying 6875 votes on Tuesday, Kitsap now says that there are 7000 more ballots to be counted.
Now, the difference between 14,000 and 13,875 (6875 counted plus 7000 untallied) is quite small and not worth worrying about. But then there's Pierce County. Monday's estimate said there were 20,000 uncounted ballots. After tallying 8954 additional ballots on Tuesday, Pierce now says it needs to work on 6100 more ballots. But 8954 plus 6100 totals just 15,054, which means that Pierce County actually held nearly 5000 fewer ballots than they'd previously thought.
That's a problem for Gregoire, because the race in Pierce County is fairly close (approximately 51-47 in Rossi's favor). Things would look much better for her if it had been, say, Benton County (68-30, Rossi) or Yakima County (64-34, Rossi) that overestimated its number of uncounted ballots.
Numerous factors, small and not-so-small, have converged to make tonight's picture appear more favorable for stealth wingnut Dino Rossi than for wimpy triangulator Christine Gregoire. But who knows what tomorrow's results will show? Gregoire's biggest counties -- Thurston and great big King -- report their latest updates on Wednesday (but so do some big counties where Rossi leads, like Spokane and Clark).