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If Gregoire’s minor miracle is going to happen, it needs to happen today. The vast majority of the counties are counting ballots today, and the amount left to count after today will be negligible. We should be pretty confident of the winner after today, barring a Gregoire surge that puts her neck-and-neck again. The more I look at the numbers, the more unlikely that looks.

There are an estimated 84,715 ballots left to count. Gregoire, who trails by 3,500, needs to win about 4,000 more of those ballots than Rossi. If Libertarian candidate Ruth Bennett takes 2%, then that means Gregoire needs to win 43,500 of those ballots, or 51.4%. That will be a tall order, considering the fact that the vast majority of those ballots come from counties Rossi won.

And Gregoire has another problem. Many of the ballots yet to be counted in King County are provisional ballots–she’s been spinning that as a good thing, because college students make up a good percentage of those, who can be expected to break for the Democrat. It’s not, however, a good thing for her. Looking at the changes in numbers, it appears that only 84% of the estimated King County ballots counted in the past week have been valid. If that holds up for the last 25,000 ballots there, then there will only be about 21,000 valid ballots. That would bring Rossi’s King County cushion to an astronomical 12%. That is to say, if everything else continues coming in as expected, Gregoire would need to take over 71% of those 21,000 ballots to catch up to Rossi. She only won 59%.

The Tacoma News Tribune is the first newspaper I’ve seen run the same sort of analysis I’ve been running here, and they’ve come to roughly the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, Gregoire’s getting desperate, suing the Democrat-run (I assume) King County Elections Office to get the names of a few hundred voters whose provisional ballots have been discarded because their signatures did not match. Many of the counties are giving parties that information, but King County is not. These are some pretty thin straws to grasp at.

And, while I’ve been typing, Pierce county counted a couple thousand more votes. Gregoire ran a little more strongly in these than her other Pierce County votes, which begins to even out the incredibly good count for Rossi two days ago. Rossi still gained a few votes. The spreadsheet is updated.

UPDATE (12:45): So far today, Pierce, Mason, Stevens and San Juan have added a few hundred ballots, with minimal change. Stefan Sharkansky has a continually updated look at the remarkably hefty hill Gregoire needs to climb in order to get back in this game. And, of course, the spreadsheet continues its march to victory.

UPDATE (2:30): Gray’s Harbor, Jefferson and Snohomish counties have all added votes. Snohomish added the most, and this batch was better for Gregoire than in the past, but not nearly good enough to get her where she needs to go. Rossi’s lead has remained at 3,700+ for the entire day. Things are staying pretty stagnant, which is very bad news for Gregoire. As was the case two days ago, when the returns come in from King County, the look of things will probably change pretty drastically, but it will revert to form as more votes come in.

I see one potential victory scenario for Gregoire, but it’s a stretch: If she drops Rossi’s share of the last 25,000 King County votes to about 36.5%–theoretically possible if the only votes left are provisional ballots–and drops his share of everything else by about 2%, then she’ll eke out a win. There are two problems with that, though. No counties but King have been showing anything even resembling a move like that, and this scenario only works if every single one of the estimated 25,000 King County ballots is real and counted. As I mentioned before, chances are that only 21,000 of them will be. If that’s the case, she’d need to knock Rossi down another half a percentage point or more statewide, which is exceedingly unlikely. But she can’t count on just King county anymore–she would need to hold Rossi to less than 33%, even if all 25,000 votes are cast. That’s just not going to happen. Use the spreadsheet to see if you can come up with other potential scenarios. (A side note about the spreadsheet–I started adding Libertarian candidate Ruth Bennet into the mix, but doing so did not change the outcome by more than a few votes, and was far more trouble than it was worth. So that’s why she’s not on it.)

At any rate, unless something truly curious happens, Washington, get ready to join California, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Connecticut, Hawaii and Rhode Island in the happy club of Blue states with Red governors.

UPDATE (3:45): Island County came up pretty big for Rossi, boosting him by 150 with a count about 2% better than previously. This is probably partly due to military absentees sent back to Whidbey Island Air Force Base, God bless ‘em. Remember, anything that doesn’t trend Gregoire’s way by at least 2% is very bad news for her.

UPDATE (4:20): Gregoire got a leeetle bit of help from Kitsap, Klickitat and Whitman counties. She gained 5 votes! If she wasn’t still 3,900 votes behind, and didn’t need every county to shift to her by 2%, that might be construed as a good thing. Check the spreadsheet if you want to decide whether or not to construe it that way.

UPDATE(4:40): Well, Gregoire got the help she needed from King, keeping Rossi to just over 36% in the 13,000 ballots just added from that county. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the counties don’t appear to be cooperating: the additions of a few hundred ballots from Skagit, Yakima and Douglas counties keeps Rossi ahead by 700 votes. With only 56,000 votes left to count, and only 15,000 of them from Gregoire counties, I just don’t see a way for her to pull it out. Unless something changes drastically in the rest of the votes that come in tonight, I’ll feel pretty comfortable saying “Governor-elect Rossi” without any caveats. Consult the nicely updated spreadsheet, if you’d like to behold this directly.

UPDATE(4:58): Whatcom County just dropped a very Gregoire-friendly smattering of ballots–probably provisional ballots from Western Washington students. If there had been more than 140 of them, then the Gregoire folks might have reason to hope. Right now, however, the math says otherwise–though King County’s remarkable push for Gregoire may well push this to a recount, if it continues with the last 11,000 ballots.

Posted by Timothy Goddard at 9:45 am 11/12/2004 | Rossi v. Gregoire

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