What Washington state's results say about election
By The Herald Editorial Board
There are two national pastimes during election season: The first is attempting to predict the outcome from what voters tell pollsters before the election. The second is attempting to discern what the voters said with their ballots after the election.
Maybe the fable from India of The Blind Men and the Elephant is a bit too spot on, considering one party’s mascot, but the explanations, theories and finger-pointing have offered at best a scattershot of factors.
Washington state voters added more wrinkles to those discussions of the elephant’s skin by breaking from the overall national direction in their choice for U.S. president, even among fellow blue states.
Nationally, Republican Donald Trump won 312 electors and 50.4 percent of the popular vote to Democrat Kamala Harris’ 220 electors and 48 percent of the popular vote. But in Washington state, a majority of voters — 57.6 percent — rejected Trump for the third straight time and voted for Harris, while 38.4 percent voted for Trump; keeping to the state’s recent blue streak of support for the Democratic presidential ticket, including nearly 58 percent in 2020 for Joe Biden and 54 percent in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Where in some blue states Harris under-performed compared to Biden and Clinton, the vice president in this state nearly matched Biden’s support and did better than Clinton.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-what-washington-states-results-say-about-election/