Washington GOP caucus **results thread**

[Alcon]

It looks like Romney by 11 points.

More, if anything.  Romney is outperforming his state average in both King and Pierce (+9% and +5%, respectively).  Based on a simplistic extrapolation, the remaining vote probably splits about 57% King, 35% Pierce and 8% Chelan.

Strong night for Romney, even if he's likely to barely beat his Colorado showing.

[Alcon]

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

[Alcon]

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.

[Alcon]

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

[Alcon]

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.

[Alcon]

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.

[Alcon]

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

[Alcon]

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%.

[Alcon]

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.

[Alcon]

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.

[Alcon]

King is now listed as 75% in and Paul leads by 271, so Santorum actually beat him in the last batch.  My Southeast County hypothesis may have been spot-on, but at this rate it wouldn't be enough.

[Alcon]

I'm not sure about LD results, but it seems reasonable, considering that the big counties are reporting by LD.

In other news, Southeast King County must have been in the last dumps (where Santorum led) because the remaining LDs are all affluent Seattle suburbs and Seattle's most liberal, urban district.  Expect Romney to do very well in the final batch, and Santorum to do poorly.  I'm ready to call this for Paul in 2nd.

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edit: Full disclosure that the 32rd and 45th have some more working-class voters in Shoreline and rural-ish areas, respectively, but the 41st is probably Washington's richest LD.  The 43rd has a puny Republican population, and may go for Paul; McCain didn't break 10%.  None of these areas seem like they'd be rich in Santorum votes.

[Alcon]

I forget if this has been confirmed --- are they using old or new districts?

I don't know how they'd use new districts, since the precincts aren't finished in virtually any county...so probably old, unless they split up precincts between LDs and allocated delegates somehow.  Sounds like a nightmare to me.

Although actually, I think that's exactly what the Democrats are doing, and I think it's a terrible idea.

[Alcon]

97% reporting

King now 81% in, Paul back up to +323.

Romney 17,922
Paul 11,998
Santorum 11,675
Gingrich 5,066

[Alcon]

99% reporting

King now 88% in, Paul down slightly to +313.  Great for Romney; may have been a suburban district.

Romney 18,771 (+849)
Paul 12,248 (+250)
Santorum 11,935 (+260)
Gingrich 5,175 (+109)

[Alcon]

100% reporting; Paul jumps up to a 505-vote lead in the unofficial final results.

Romney 19,111 (+340)
Paul 12,594 (+346)
Santorum 12,089 (+154)
Gingrich 5,221 (+46)

I guess that may be the 46th LD there (must be lonely to be a Santorum supporter in Seattle, but maybe some people were playing with the process.)

Romney 38%
Paul 25%
Santorum 24%
Gingrich 10%

[Alcon]

This may be an underestimation, but the Washington Democratic Party's database lists 187,003 people as being credited with voting in the 2008 caucuses.

Also, congratulations to the WA GOP on a freakishly accurate turnout estimate.  They predicted 50,000 people and 50,764 people voted.

[Alcon]

That's great voter turnout!

For the Republican caucuses, yes.  In general, not really.