Our place in the Alliance...

With about ~5K votes left to count in WA, Whatcom County has returned the 8th highest number of ballots for last Tuesday's primary. The registered voter turnout averaged 30% for the state as a whole and the turnout numbers were miserable for the top 10 ballot returning counties.  Below, I use CVAP (Citizen Voting Age Population) ratios to examine those top 10 counties performance in last Tuesday's primary. Below TB_CVAP represents Total.Ballots/CVAP_EST and RV_CVAP represents Registered.Voters/CVAP_EST.

      County Total.Ballots   TB_CVAP Registered.Voters CVAP_EST   RV_CVAP
1       King        340948 0.2536098           1175330  1344380 0.8742543
2     Pierce        120667 0.2120145            442910   569145 0.7782024
3  Snohomish        106292 0.2145493            417448   495420 0.8426143
4    Spokane         98773 0.2822892            281056   349900 0.8032466
5      Clark         71463 0.2413638            251835   296080 0.8505640
6     Kitsap         50703 0.2681918            154069   189055 0.8149427
7   Thurston         46893 0.2506240            163027   187105 0.8713129
8    Whatcom         42540 0.2850633            126961   149230 0.8507740
9     Yakima         33702 0.2411937            106925   139730 0.7652258
10    Benton         32661 0.2746122             98612   118935 0.8291252

These top ten WA counties contain:

• 944,642 out of 1,204,391 total ballots for this primary election to date
• 3,218,173 out of 3,925,658 total registered voters statewide
• 3,838,980 out of 4,737,840 of the CVAP of WA (2012 most recent estimate).

Whatcom County usually plays above it's electoral and demographic weight. Although less populous than Yakima, we regularly contribute thousands more in ballots.  Our turnouts are often strong enough to chase a significantly more populous Thurston County.  One day, we may well catch them.The last two general elections have cemented our reputation as a county that gets out the vote and brings home seats for the Democrats for both federal (2012) and county (2013).  And the question on everyone's mind this year is: Can we do the same in November for the monstrous and all important WA 42 LD?  (to be continued....)