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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Election UW Forecast: R-71 Will Pass

Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:02 PM

The Washington Poll, a project run by the University of Washington, predicts that Referendum 71 will pass by over 80,000 votes. Matt Barreto, an associate professor of political science at the UW, says they used a combination of extrapolating results from the first day of election returns and factoring in a surge of late ballots from King County, which is currently favoring R-71 by a 30-point margin. These are the numbers the UW is predicting:

Total votes: 1,757,924

Votes to approve: 919,727

Votes to reject: 838,198

Margin of approval: 81,529

Although the measure leads only by two points (current results here), Barreto expects the margin to grow to more than four points. "We think the large turnout in King County will bump it up," he says.

"Usually data comes in fairly consistent patterns and doesn't change more than two to three points from election night to final returns," Barreto says. However, he believes King County voters disproportionately mailed their ballots in the last days before the cut-off, so they haven't yet been tallied, while they made up their minds in the mayor's race. "We have a pretty high degree of confidence in the King County [voter turnout] estimate, and that by itself should be enough to secure the approval of Referendum 71. Even if King County gets more conservative [as votes are tallied], R-71 will still pass because it has such a wide margin in King County."

Comments (13) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

So.... when can my partner and I get not married? We have been holding off on a trip to Iowa.

Posted by Womyn2me $http://http:\\www.shelleyandlaura.com$ on November 4, 2009 at 1:09 PM

I'm not gay, but I wish I were so I could "threaten the institution of marriage."

Posted by Ponyboy on November 4, 2009 at 1:12 PM

yeah, that makes sense, king county comes to the rescue once again. the big question is will the votes posted tonight be in a "fairly consistent pattern" or not. it could also be eastern washington gets more hateful in the late votes. but yeah, i can buy this.

Posted by jimmy john on November 4, 2009 at 1:17 PM

Even if that is the case @3, look at the voter turnout http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/WEI/VoterTu…
They (eastern WA) just don't seem to have the numbers. Crossing my fingers though!

Posted by Adie on November 4, 2009 at 1:21 PM

Please let it be so.

Posted by kim in portland

on November 4, 2009 at 1:26 PM

Adie @ 4 -- that's exactly right, and from browsing the UW spreadsheet of vote estimates, it seems this is what they have taken into account, that King County has more total votes left to be counted, and is heavily in favor of 71 -- all good news

Posted by Wilson on November 4, 2009 at 1:34 PM

I seem to remember a lot of estimates showing that this wouldn't have enough valid signatures to make it on the ballot too, and we all know how that turned out.

Posted by JohnnyC on November 4, 2009 at 2:16 PM

@3 - when we're 30 percent of the voters in Washington State, what we say goes.

Deal with it - or move.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on November 4, 2009 at 2:34 PM

Their assumption of 50% turnout might be optimistic, but other than that I can't argue with their logic. About the only way it could go wrong is if the late ballots skew more towards rejection than the early ones. As #4 points out, this would pretty much have to happen in one of the counties with a lot of ballots left to count to swing the vote enough to matter.

Posted by Orv on November 4, 2009 at 3:21 PM

@9 - highly unlikely. A lot of the last minute ones were undecided on the Seattle mayoral race for the most part, or a few key Port or School Board races, and they tended to break for 71.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on November 4, 2009 at 3:46 PM

11 Comment Pulled (Spam) Comment Policy

New results are now posted and the UW report looks spot on, the approve lead has grown to 40,000 and the results did in fact come in consistent with yesterday (slightly more approve in Puget region).

Yay!

Posted by NoseBud on November 4, 2009 at 6:16 PM

What do you mean, "however"? "Usually data comes in fairly consistent patterns and doesn't change more than two to three points" and they're expecting it to rise from a 2 pt spread to a 4 pt spread: 4 minus 2 is within "two to three points". Why "however"?

Posted by idaho on November 4, 2009 at 11:01 PM