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As November approaches, political polls, betting markets, and statistical predictions become widely used. But there’s one predictive tool you may have missed. It was the Washington state primary election that took place last month.
This is a metric that election geeks pay particular attention to, and for good reason. In a few months’ time, the state’s general election results tend to trend in the same direction as the rest of the country, either leaning Republican or leaning Democratic.
This year, Washington state’s results are cause for optimism among Democrats. These suggest a domestic environment somewhat similar to 2020, when Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points over Donald J. Trump and Democrats retained control of the House.
Here’s what you need to know about one of the lesser-known architects of US elections.
Why Washington?
Unlike primaries in other states, Washington’s primaries are highly predictive of the general election. There are several reasons for this.
Washington uses a top-two system in which all candidates, regardless of party, compete on the same vote and the top two advance to the general election. This will encourage candidates to campaign harder to ensure their participation in the final vote in November. And they can incentivize voters to vote, rather than risk having their preferred candidate, or even their own party, excluded from the ballot if they don’t vote.
The barrier to participation is low, as voting is done almost entirely by mail and voters have almost three weeks to cast their votes. (Primaries that rely mostly or exclusively on in-person voting on Election Day are likely to attract only a fraction of the most committed voters.)
The dates for primaries are typically held in August or September, much later than most other primaries, giving less time for the mood to change before the November election.
Some states have similar basic structures, while others have slower basic structures. But no state has Washington’s combination of key structures, large voter numbers, and late calendar dates. All of this combined means a high turnout election with a broad and relatively diverse electorate just months before the rest of the country votes for president.
What will this year’s Washington state primary tell us?
If you only used the Washington state primary to predict U.S. House voting trends, you would do relatively well. The subtle left-right shifts in primaries have been consistent with those in the country in all but two election cycles since 2000.
But Washington state and the country aren’t just moving in the same direction. They also tend to move in either direction to a similar extent. If we had predicted that each Washington state primary from 2000 to 2022 would have shifted the nation as a whole to the left or right by the same level as the state’s primary, we would have made an average error of less than 3 percentage points. . pretty good!
Last month, House Democrats in Washington received 58% of the major party vote across the state’s 10 congressional districts, giving Democrats a three-point lead over their 2022 results.
If this change were fully reflected in the national vote, it would mean a 3-point shift to the left of the 2022 House vote (when Republicans narrowly won the House), with a Democratic popular turnout of 48%. This will increase from 51% to 51%. This total is about the same as Democrats’ 2020 performance and 2 points better than their 2016 result.
Independent election analysis site SplitTicket’s analysis went further by looking at election results in just non-metropolitan areas of Washington state. They found that, excluding Seattle, Washington state is demographically similar to the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Since 2012, primaries in these non-metro districts have consistently tracked the November House vote, typically by an additional three to five points to the right.
Like the rest of the state, the district outside of Seattle has moved slowly to the left since 2022, slightly more to the left than where it was in 2020, which is likely another big deal for Democrats. That’s good news.
Can you tell us something about your presidency?
Only up to a certain point. The Washington primary is reflected in the national popular vote, so it is useful for considering the overall mood of the country, but it is less useful for predicting the presidential election, where specific candidates, issues, and economic conditions will make a big difference. No. And, more importantly, the Electoral College. As we learned from the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, the popular vote in close races is only a partial indicator of how the most important battleground states will fare.
Coincidentally, the 2016 primary results in non-metropolitan Washington suggested that Hillary Clinton might underperform in the northern battleground states. She did.
Why Washington won’t be very predictable in 2024
There are other reasons to be cautious about the predictive power of this year’s Washington primary.
It is unclear to what extent August’s preliminary results were influenced by a highly turbulent July. President Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the race on July 21, but Democrats’ immediate excitement over Kamala Harris’ nomination reflects early enthusiasm that may not extend to Election Day. This may have increased turnout in the Washington state primary.
A lot has already happened since that primary, and a lot may still happen. Since the Washington primary, the nation has seen the Democratic National Convention, the first debate between Harris and Trump, the endorsement of Taylor Swift, and the second assassination attempt on Trump.
There’s also no guarantee that the Washington primary will continue to run parallel to the nation as a whole. In the early years, from 1978 to 1998, Washington and the nation as a whole were more likely to trend in opposite directions than together.
But if recent trends hold, the Washington state primary suggests the country will move 3 points to the left starting in 2022, plus or minus 3 points. This is roughly in line with today’s polling averages, although key results in 2020 correctly suggested that Biden’s large lead in the polls was overstated. Still, that’s a wide margin of error for the most competitive House races and the essentially toss-up presidential race.
