Washington State Primary Results Suggest Republican Wipeout

Way out here in Washington state we are used to being politically ignored. We aren’t a presidential battle ground. We aren’t an early primary or caucus state. Democrats routinely win. But there is one thing about our politics that attracts national attention: the predictive value of our primaries. And this year our primary is predicting a big blue wave, both locally and nationally

National analyst, Sean Trende, of Real Clear Politics, has written about this the most often:

This is something I’ve written about since 2010. In short, in Washington state, all candidates run on the same primary ballot. Because of this, and because of the fact that the primary occurs relatively late in the election season, there tends to be a strong correlation between a party’s combined vote share on the primary ballot and its eventual vote share in November, typically with a slight swing toward Democrats. It’s been helpful in providing a sense of where things really stand in Washington state’s races, and for understanding what the national environment is like.

Using combined vote share, if the results in the general election mirror the primary results we have seen so far Republicans will lose Washington state congressional and legislative seats once thought to be safely red.

In the 3^rd congressional district -southwest Washington and the Portland, Oregon suburbs – Democratic Congresswoman Maria Glusenkamp Perez and two other Democrats are garnering 56% of the vote. This is a shocking result given the fact that this district was drawn to be a safe Republican seat, and Glusenkamp Perez barely won here in 2022 and ’24.

Republicans are trailing in three legislative seats (the 17^th and 18^th districts) they now hold in the Vancouver suburbs, trailing in a current Republican seat in the Tacoma suburbs, and amazingly trail in a seat in eastern Washington (the 12^th). At least five other current Republican seats in rural and suburban areas are in danger based on these primary results.

Republicans have already become uncompetitive in the Puget Sound suburbs. Now they are hemorrhaging support in rural and exurb areas of Washington state.

I am not enough of data nerd to be able to extrapolate how these numbers play out in terms of how many seats Republicans will lose in the US House and Senate, but if Republicans are losing seats in southwest and eastern Washington the coming wave will be massive

Once upon a time, all politics were local. Now, all politics are national. As late as 2015, Republicans had a one seat majority in the State Senate and were within two seats in the State House. Today the GOP is irrelevant in the Evergreen state. As long as the Republican party is defined by Trump and his populist MAGA movement formerly purple states like Washington will continue to suffer under one party rule as moderate, swing suburban voters continue to choose the Democrats as the lesser of two evils.

The Republican party is going to lose in November, but the Trump era is about to end. Republican leaders in Washington state, and around the country should be thinking now about how they can fight to reposition the GOP for 2028, and that means returning the party to the  core Reaganite conservative values and policies which once made the GOP competitive in a place like Washington state.