Political observers are now pointing to the primary results in Washington state as a sign of what the 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could look like.
The Washington primaries are strong predictors of both the general mood among voters and the general election because of how late they are held (August or September), leaving voters less time to change their minds before November. The New York Times reported.
Additionally, their primaries are free-for-all, and all candidates, regardless of party, compete on the same ballot. The top two advance to the final vote. In theory, this incentivizes candidates to campaign harder and voters to participate more.
Add it all up, and Washington has a high-turnout election with a diverse voter base just months before the rest of the country votes for president.
Last month, Washington House Democrats received 58 percent of the major party votes, three points more than in 2022.
This suggests there may be reason for Harris to be optimistic heading into November.
Washington state primary results bode well for Kamala Harris and suggest Donald Trump could underperform in the popular vote against her.
The numbers indicate that the country is in a similar mood to 2020, when Joe Biden beat Trump by 4.5 percentage points in the national popular vote and Democrats held on to the House of Representatives.
If Washington’s numbers were applied to this year’s popular vote compared to previous years, Democrats would perform similarly to 2020 and two points better than 2016.
However, the shortcoming of this prediction method is that it can only provide a window into the popular vote, not the electoral college, which will determine the winner of the election.
Trump himself was able to decisively beat Hillary Clinton in the electoral college vote in 2016, despite the Democrat getting nearly 2.9 million more votes.
The 2016 primary results in non-urban areas of Washington (excluding Seattle) suggested that Clinton would underperform in the northern battleground states, which she continued to do.
An analysis by SplitTicket, an independent election analysis site, studied Washington’s election results and excluded Seattle.
An analysis by SplitTicket, an independent election analysis site, studied Washington’s election results and excluded Seattle.
As part of its study, the company showed parts of Washington that overall are much more demographically similar to major swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
According to recent polls, the candidates are very evenly matched in those three states; Harris leads Trump by a single point, 48 percent to 47 percent, in Michigan, and by two in Wisconsin, 49 percent to 47 percent, according to a New York Times/Siena College survey.
In Pennsylvania, Harris is up 50 to 48 percent, according to a Fox News Poll.
Perhaps the best predictor of the presidential election in Washington is the weather in Clallam County. County voters have chosen the winning presidential candidate every time since 1980.
When analyzing the primary results from Clallam County, also known as the 6th Congressional District, Democrats received 59.2 percent of the votes on the first ballot, while Republicans only received 38 percent.