Experts on State and Local Election Takeaways

They Parsed the Data So You Don't Have To

The Washington State Community Alliance has done us an amazing favor by bringing some good data-journalism to Washington State.

Beside providing a great look at what is going on statewide, and what that might indicate for the national election (hints of a slightly better environment than 2020!!!)--their data team also dug into the Seattle City Council Election.

Here is their organization’s newsletter signup page.

One of their more surprising discoveries is that the racial and age makeup of the electorate aren’t as different as many people (myself included) thought they might be.

Here is their summary of the key point: voter persuasion mattered!

One may intuitively credit the high-turnout, even-year election for this progressive bump. Indeed more Seattleites have already voted in 2024’s Primary than last year’s 2023 Primary—with many more ballots left uncounted. In fact, nearly ⅓ (~50,000 voters and growing) of Seattle 2024 Primary voters did not vote in 2023’s Primary. 

However, while there are more voters in 2024, they look pretty similar to 2023’s primary electorate. 2024 was only about 2% more BIPOC and young (<40yrs). They came from roughly the same places (city council districts), too. These statistics may shift slightly in the coming days as late (younger, less white) ballots are counted.

So Seattle progressives’ victory is not obviously because of the even-year environment, but because progressives have flipped a sizable number of voters.

First, at the top level, I agree.

In my own day-after-the-election analysis, I noted something similar: At that point in the count, anyway–the increased turnout could have played a role, but that the magnitude of change in electoral outcome could not be explained by the turnout alone.

However, I might disagree with one part. The last sentence is a little unclear and can be interpreted in ways that I don’t think quite accord with the data, so at the very least I’d write it differently. 

First, I’d be careful about saying “progressives flipped the seats” in an August primary when most people know very little about candidates, especially new challengers. 

Our candidate is doing a fantastic job–but because of the nature of how this works, including the fact that most people learn about the candidates during the general, if ever, the public is just getting to know her. And for what it is worth, I think she will do even better as they get to know her more, because she is awesome. 

But right now they almost certainly have reason to know a lot more about the incumbents, and if other polls are to be believed, they do not like what they are seeing. 

It thus most plausible that conservatives are turning off voters. 

There are, of course, other factors that could play a role, like a coconut-pilled bunch of Democrats walzing around Seattle too! Enthusiasm for Democrats matters, when candidates like Alexis are fighting for Democratic policy and Tanya Woo is weirdly pushing for orthodox Republican economic and budgetary policy.

Last, while we can almost certainly say that higher turnout isn’t sufficient to explain the different outcome, we cannot yet say it is unnecessary or not contributory.

After all, are predictive, but there were plenty of reasons for the progressive part of each demo group to stay home last year. And (as they noted), given that there is a demographic skew in when ballots are counted, we don’t yet have a sense of exactly how similar they will be compared to last year.

That said, if the demographics continue to match and the geographic distribution (water view v I-5 view) continue to match, the case that it was most or all flipped votes will be much convincing. 

Political nerds like me will certainly be eagerly looking forward to knowing!