WA Turns Redder, Despite Faulty Media Reports That Said Otherwise

Bellevue - Washington did NOT “turn bluer” in this month’s general election, despite faulty reports from the mainstream media. In fact, by standard political metrics, Evergreen State voters turned slightly more toward Republican candidates in 2024. This continues an incremental move toward the political middle that’s been in place for several years.

In the early hours after the November 5th election, many mainstream media outlets promoted the hasty-and false-narrative that Washington had bucked the national trend of more conservative voting. This false narrative was based on looking at the state’s votes in the presidential election. Early returns in that race suggested that Donald Trump was getting a slightly smaller percentage of votes cast than he had in the 2020 election. Mistake.

“People who know Washington state politics know not to read major conclusions in preliminary results,” says Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP) Chairman Jim Walsh. “Our 100 percent mail-in voting system is slow. We wait days, even weeks, before we know for certain what the final results will be. So was the case this time, as media outlets jumped to wrong conclusions. This is just one reason the WAGOP would like to see a return to in-person, same-day voting. We’d be less prone to early media reports that turn out to be false.”

When more complete results were available, it became clear that Donald Trump gained ground in WA slightly from 2020 to 2024. His gain wasn’t huge—about a 1-percent increase in his percentage of votes received. Still, it was a gain. The Cook Political Report was one of the first media platforms to report what was actually happening in Washington.

“We knew Trump was going to do slightly better this year than he did in 2020,” says Chairman Walsh. “We knew this from the conversations our field staff was having with people during door-knocking. We knew it from our campaign events and our internal polling. The ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was not as pervasive this year as it was before. And, most importantly, we’re seeing an incremental increase in Republican vote shares in ALL Washington races. So, the better presidential result was in line with that trend.”

Indeed, Republican results at all levels did better in 2024 than in 2020 and earlier elections cycles.

Among Washington’s nine statewide executive races, Republican candidates increased their average performance by about four percentage points, with the median performance at about 45 percent. In competitive congressional races, the news was even better, with Republicans increasing their median performance to about 47 percent. State legislative races in “swing” districts showed similar improvements.

“We still need to do better,” says Chairman Walsh. “We are still challenged in those statewide executive position races. But we’re getting more competitive overall. If Washington Republicans stay on this track, at the rate we’re going, we’ll be much more competitive in a few years.”

Finally, Chairman Walsh suggests that mainstream media outlets not rush to hasty conclusions about Washington elections. “I’m sure it was tempting to write headlines or design graphics that showed our state turning ‘bluer’ while the rest of the country turned more conservative. But that’s not what happened. Washington turned just slightly ‘redder’ in the presidential election this year. And ‘redder’ still in other federal and state-level elections.”

And WAGOP is just getting started.