Washington GOP caucus **results thread**

[wormyguy]

Reports from Vantage, Washington, of about 5,000 pieces of paper reading "Ron Paul" floating down the Columbia River.

You may mock, but the Maine GOP chairman out-and-out said that they threw out every ballot paper:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/17/maine-gop-chair-romney-will-maintain-win/

"Absolutely no recount," the chairman said. "There's no way to recount. These were just slips of paper that were thrown away after."

"There's nothing to recount. There's no ballots left," he added.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Brian M. Rosenthal ‏ @brianmrosenthal  Reply  Retweet  Favorite · Open
Chelan County finally in. The only #wacaucus votes missing are 8 leg districts in King and 1 in Pierce - the one Paul visited this morning

Not able to find Chelan results yet.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Chelan:

Romney 209
Santorum 194
Paul 181
Gingrich 99
Uncommitted 44
Other 1

Told you that you could make a good case for Romney, Santorum or Paul winning Chelan

[J. J.]

Chelan:

Romney 209
Santorum 194
Paul 181
Gingrich 99
Uncommitted 44
Other 1

Told you that you could make a good case for Romney, Santorum or Paul winning Chelan

AP doesn't have it yet.

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

I'm not so sure why people are so surprised.

Look at the pre-Colorado predictions. Like I said at the start - my chart had WA as strong Romney. I was shocked with the predictions that Santorum could take WA - just because of the demographics.

Like it was said earlier - WA is a coastal state in the west. Mitt is very strong in the west (+Mitt), strong in Obama states (WA isn't purple), and weak in midwest states, southern states and Red states.

WA is not a hard Romney call right from the beginning. I'm still struggling to understand the PPP polls with Santorum up by double digits in WA.

So, tonight is a victory for sanity if that means anything at all. It means that our essential analysis of the situation is correct, and should prevail on super tuesday. OH will determine the nomination.

A win in OH for Santorum over Romney means that he should get the nomination. A win by Romney means that he should get the nomination, as he'll have enough support with IL + OH, despite losing in MI with the delegate split.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

More Pierce in, up to 80% reporting.  Not a great LD for Romney; I think Paul and Santorum did fairly well in Puyallupland, which is where Twitter alleges the remaining LD was.  (Although there's clearly more missing.)

Paul now leads by 189 with the vast majority of outstanding votes from King County.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Chelan:

Romney 209
Santorum 194
Paul 181
Gingrich 99
Uncommitted 44
Other 1

Told you that you could make a good case for Romney, Santorum or Paul winning Chelan

AP doesn't have it yet.

It does as of 3-5 minutes ago.

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

Told you that you could make a good case for Romney, Santorum or Paul winning Chelan

Then Santorum stands in third, and he's still not showing well out west.

[J. J.]

Told you that you could make a good case for Romney, Santorum or Paul winning Chelan

Then Santorum stands in third, and he's still not showing well out west.

80% of Pierce is in.  Paul is still leading Santorum by 0.6 points.  Romney is leading Paul by 11.

[Inks.LWC Supports Chuck Hagel]

Almost there!

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

80% of Pierce is in.  Paul is still leading Santorum by 0.6 points.  Romney is leading Paul by 11.

I call at double variance and variance is at about .5 percent. Paul leads Santorum by .445 points, so even with calling at variance it's still TCTC.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

izabels ‏ @izabels  Reply  Retweet  Favorite · Open
#RonPaul winWA the msmCNnFOXMSNBC not cover of #WACAUCUS lol #PresidentPaul #gop #tcot #Pe #tpot #ohprimary #akcaucus #idcaucus #vtprimary

[Meeker]

Isn't it a little suspicious that the GOP is able to release the King County results in exactly 25% margins?

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Pierce now 100% reported, and the last results were good enough for Santorum that he now trails Paul by just 178 votes statewide.

All remaining votes are now in King County, where there have been two dumps: one a modest win for Paul over Santorum, and one a Paulslide.

Isn't it a little suspicious that the GOP is able to release the King County results in exactly 25% margins?

They tallied results by LD, so my guess is they didn't have the number of precincts per LD handy, so they reported to AP "we have 4/16 LDs counted" (25%), and the AP set it to whatever number of precincts would equal 25%.

[J. J.]

Isn't it a little suspicious that the GOP is able to release the King County results in exactly 25% margins?

No.

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

The first one was 19-19 for Paul/Santorum so it a draw. Still two dumps left.

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

Since it would be unseemly to wait until after all the results are in, I'm calling it for Paul.

[J. J.]

Pierce now 100% reported, and the last results were good enough for Santorum that he now trails Paul by just 178 votes statewide.

All remaining votes are now in King County, where there have been two dumps: one a modest win for Paul over Santorum, and one a Paulslide.

If it holds, Santorum drops and Romney increases.

The good news for Santorum is that this is a Saturday, with other news and it probably will have limited effect on Super Tuesday.

The bad news is, it is probably reflective of momentum.

[ModerateCoward]

Congratulations Politico Winfield!

Fixed.

Thank you very much, and might I say..........Congratulations Politico

as Winfield and Politico give each other a cyber high five.  

This is a great night for Washington, this is a great night for America, and this is a great night for democracy, not to mention a great night for Mitt.

What about all those Rahn Pahl votes in floating in the Columbia river?

[Grad Students are the Worst]

I'm not quite ready to call it for Paul.

The first King County LDs dumped were the 1st, 31st, 47th and 48th.  The 1st and 48th are suburban districts.  The 47th is suburban and exurban.  The 31st is exurban, rural and small.

The next dump that was solidly for Paul.  We don't know which four LDs it was.  However, if Paul and Santorum were tied in an overwhelmingly suburban and exurban sample, it would be reasonable to guess that the second dump was Seattle-heavy.

If that is so, the remaining areas to report are probably in Southeastern King County, the most working-class area.  Demographically, it seems like it would be Santorum's best area of the county.  I just doubt it was heavily represented in the second dump, because it's hard to imagine it being strongly Paul over Santorum.

Of course, this is sketchy data to work with, but I'd say you can make a reasonable argument that Santorum is likelier to prevail.

[platypeanArchcow]

The numbers in King just jumped but the percentage in didn't...

[Meeker]

Isn't it a little suspicious that the GOP is able to release the King County results in exactly 25% margins?

No.

Well I guess that settles that!

[IDS Speaker Ben Kenobi]

The bad news is, it is probably reflective of momentum.

To put it in perspective.

Romney's been holding serve. MI was a loss as he was choked out of any delegate advantage.

WA was another Romney state that was up for grabs that he successfully defended. Super Tuesday is his first opportunity to do some damage to the conservatives on their home front.

Winning states you are supposed to win isn't really indicative of much - especially with his weak showing here, compared with AZ.

Had this been an AZ style blowout, sure. But he still only got 36 percent in WA. That's - really not a good showing for Romney. He's still very vulnerable, and if what we are seeing is any indication - still having trouble selling himself to voters.

So it's all going to come down to Super Tuesday where the South finally gets another chance to have a say, something it hasn't had since South Carolina.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

I may be crazy, but I think more King County just came in?  It's now Paul by 303, and the King County margin between Paul and Santorum looks roughly unchanged.  If there were new votes, it didn't look like 25% of the county's worth, though.

Perhaps there's nothing new and I'm going crazy.

[J. J.]

Isn't it a little suspicious that the GOP is able to release the King County results in exactly 25% margins?

No.

Well I guess that settles that!

Alcon explained perfectly.