All eyes are on the big price tomorrow – New York, but Washington is still in play and some changes happened yesterday in The Evergreen State. Almost 2/3 of the legislative districts there caucused and chose delegates for the Congressional district caucuses. Unofficial results are available and they show some changes in the state’s picture. If you take a closer look at the results, Hillary won 236 delegates yesterday out of 878 elected (Bernie won the rest; no uncommitted). Those 236 delegates are 26,88% of the qualifying vote. She used to have 27,15% of that vote. Not a game changer, one would think – only 0,27% drop! Well, not exactly!
Three areas voted yesterday. The first one was the central part of Spokane county. Hillary dropped there from 21,7% to 17,86% and is on the verge to lose viability at CD level, especially if she loses viability in one or more of the Northeastern counties – Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille. If we judge by Spokane, she will have hard time keeping viability in most CD4 counties too.
The second area that voted yesterday were three counties in the central South part of WA – Yakima, Klickitat and Skamania. Hillary got one more CD delegate than expected there (I don’t know why). But those were the only good news for her yesterday…
The last and biggest portion of yesterday’s vote came from the three big counties in West WA – King, Pierce and Snohomish. There came the really bad news for Hillary. She had won 29,96% of the qualifying vote at precinct level in those three counties. Now she is down to 27,58% (211 out of 765 delegates). And she lost viability in one part of CD2 – the one CD, she is most vulnerable in. Subsequently we project that she will lose one of her two delegates in CD2 and another at-large WA delegate, even if all her delegates show at the congressional district caucuses. She needed to lose 8% of her vote in WA and she did so – she lost 2,38% out of 29,96% in the three big counties. She also needed to lose some delegates in CD2 and she did that too. The only path for her to keep that second delegate in CD2 is very strong showing in San Juan and Island counties, maybe even outperforming her initial results there. The path to defend the at-large delegates is much harder if we add to the equation Okanogan county, where her chances to lose viability are 99%. Same in Wahkiakum county and maybe few more, where she is holding at the moment with less than 20% of the vote.
Final remark: Those loses yesterday happened despite the new alternates sitting rules in WA. All alternates were allowed to fill empty delegate positions in any precinct, as long it was in the same congressional district. With hundreds extra alternates for Bernie, who were not seated and were sent home after 4-5 hours waiting (I shall not comment in the diary the total mess WA level 2 caucus was) the old rules would not be a problem. But many Hillary delegates were missing and there were often no alternates from the same precinct. The new rules helped her a lot and almost everywhere all Hillary’s alternates were seated.
Yes, despite all the help Hillary got from WA Dems elected officials and DNC, she lost 8% of her vote and maybe 2 pledged delegates. And guess what – her lead is now down to 196!
New York, we are coming for you!