Washington dems, would Inslee be at all vulnerable? It seems Washington Republicans view him as vulnerable if they're pursuing Hill as hard as they are.
The GOP is simply too unpopular after Bush and some earlier things to win the governorship. Inslee's unpopularity won't be a factor, just as Gregoire was reelected with approval ratings in the low thirties.
Washington elects governors in Presidential years, so - probably yes. But i am reasonably sure McKenna would beat Inslee in 2014 or 2010. Just as Rauner beat Quinn or Hogan - Brown. If he got abput 48,5% in 2012 - he would win in these years.
Not sure even about that. Dino Rossi's uninspiring margin in the 2010 senate race suggest the Democratic shift is fairly real.
And one reuest for state gurus: i am living abroad now (and, probably, will be in foreseable future), so i am almost completely Internet-based as far as information is concerned. I am interested in opinions (objective) about ideological composition of freshmen in state legislature. Such information is not especially easy to find, and wait 2 years until someone, like Boris Shor, will update his legislative database is a long time. It seems to me, that Democratic politicians in the state (with glaring exceptions of Tim Sheldon and, may be, Christopher Hurst) are, generally, follow moderate-liberal to very liberal line, and that seems true about freshmen too, but i may be wrong. What about republican freshmen? I heard someone, like Melanie Stambaugh, be called "pro-choice moderate". Is it really so? In the past state has good numbers of reasonable moderate republicans, but, as in almost all states, they became much scarcer of recently, being pressed heavily by right-wingers.
The East-West polarization has been expanding greatly since the 1994 elections, and thus the GOP is now heavily dependent on the anti-tax, anti-gun control anti-environmental voters in the Eastern Cascades. A rightward shift was the result.
