Dinocracy in Action

Whether she wins or loses, Democrats have to be disappointed by the performance of their gubernatorial candidate. Attorney General Christine Gregoire started the race with incredible advantages. She is a popular, three-term, statewide office holder who had national bragging rights because of truly impressive leadership in the states' lawsuit against big tobacco, the settlement of which brought Washington $4 billion. She is a woman—widely considered to be an advantage in a statewide race here. She is a moderate who opposes new taxes and gay marriage and supports abortion rights and business-friendly economic development. In the Democratic primary, Gregoire routed her opponent, King County Executive Ron Sims, giving the impression that her strategy, of running on a strong résumé but staying vague about how she would tackle specific issues, was connecting with voters. She led in every independent poll until the general election.

Yet at press time, the gubernatorial contest between Gregoire and Republican former state Sen. Dino Rossi of Sammamish was too close to call. The biggest prize in state politics hinged on the final tabulation of absentee ballots, maybe even the provisional ones—those cast by registered voters at the wrong polling place on Election Day.

The party that triumphs in the governor's race will pronounce its election year strategy a success. Such a claim would be an overstatement, but in politics perception is mighty important. Given the relative positions of the two parties going into this election (Democrats held the higher state offices and one chamber of the Legislature), and given the ambitions of both parties (the Republicans wanted to reclaim relevance in Washington), the balance of power here will be determined by who moves into the governor's mansion. A few thousand votes will decide who "won" Washington's 2004 election. Why that party won will be less clear, if polls are to be believed.

When the early returns came in on election night, Nov. 2, Gregoire led not only throughout Western Washington but also in Spokane County. The rule of thumb is that early ballots are the most conservative, since they represent the wishes of older, Republican-leaning voters who cast their ballots by mail well before Election Day. For years, however, elections officials have been saying that the political balance of mailed ballots is changing, because so many of us use them now. Secretary of State Sam Reed is projecting that 60 percent of this year's Washington ballots will have been cast by mail.

Meanwhile, so many more Election Day poll voters supported Rossi that by the end of the evening he was ahead of Gregoire in big Western Washington counties like Pierce and Snohomish. The rule of thumb was no longer a rule: People who made up their minds early voted for Gregoire, the Democrat. People who waited to vote at the polls, or mailed their ballots later, supported Rossi in greater percentages than the early mail voters.

What happened? The conventional wisdom is that Rossi successfully repeated his simple message of "change" with positive advertising, while the GOP relentlessly pounded Gregoire on the failure, under her watch, of the attorney general's office to appeal a $17.8 million verdict against the state.

Gregoire, in turn, did not make an impression on the electorate. By the end of the campaign, nobody knew what she stood for or what she was going to do. She failed to craft a compelling campaign message.

Unfortunately, the results of Washington exit polling complicate this neat scenario of Rossi running a better campaign than Gregoire. Gregoire partisans say the exit poll, conducted for major media outlets by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, shows two things: Conservative Christians really helped Rossi, and Gregoire's campaign message, that she could turn the economy around, did get through.

Meanwhile and unsurprisingly, Washington clearly differed from the rest of the country on matters of war and peace. Nationally, only 15 percent of voters ranked Iraq as their most important issue, placing it fourth, behind moral values, economy/jobs, and terrorism. In Washington, Iraq ranked first, identified by 26 percent of voters as the most important issue, followed by moral values, economy/jobs, and terrorism.

So while it's clear Washington voters wanted Democrats to handle the nation's foreign policy, when it comes to our own state's future, the message is a whole lot murkier.

Exit pollsters interviewed 2,178 people statewide, according to the results posted by CNN.com. Like any poll, the findings are imperfect—this year, some would say, downright unreliable, especially considering only 40 percent of Washington voters could be represented in an exit poll because most of us vote by mail. But for the sake of discussion, let's work with the results, which have a stated margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

Washington voters ages 18 to 29 made up 12 percent of Election Day poll voters. Again, the rule of thumb would be they would lean Democratic. But again, the rule of thumb would be wrong. These young voters supported Republicans for president (President Bush 49 percent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry 48 percent), for U.S. Senate (U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt of Spokane 51 percent, incumbent Patty Murray 48 percent), and for governor (Rossi 57 percent, Gregoire 43 percent). University of Washington communications professor John Gastil says that's a testament to the strength of conservative Christian organizing. Young people, says Gastil, are hard for campaigns to reach because they do not belong in great numbers to political parties, unions, or other established groups. He claims there are two places to go to organize a turnout of young people: colleges and churches. Democrats favor the former, Republicans favor the latter. "Church-based mobilization must have been more effective than university-based mobilization," says Gastil.