Dems hit back, say Rossi lowers his primary bar too much

State Democrats sent out a memo of their own today that calls into question the validity of the pre-primary memo sent out by the Dino Rossi for governor campaign earlier this week, thus playing their own version of the expectations game.

Citing the boost Democrats hope to get from Barack Obama in the general election, they suggest Tuesday's primary is Rossi's best chance for a victory at the polls. "Between next Wednesday and November," the memo states, "Rossi's electoral prospects will become substantially worse."

Democrats point to two major factors in their memo, voting demographics and alternative views of past results.

For starters, they say that Rossi's electoral strongholds come in counties that are entirely vote-by-mail, which is a boon in the summertime. Democrats also suggest that counties who went for Rossi in 2004 vote at a higher rate in the primary than those that went for Chris Gregoire in the same year, and that the type of people who vote reliably in primaries, older and more conservative voters, favor Rossi. This refutes the Rossi camp's supposition that Gregoire leads by ten points among likely primary voters.

They also take issue with the Rossi camp's claim that past Republican gubernatorial primary results are instructive, citing a long list of Republican candidates that have won statewide primaries for positions such as secretary of state, commissioner of public lands, attorney general and insurance commissioner. Furthermore they point out that the gubernatorial races of 1980 and 2004, where the Republican went on to win and narrowly lose, respectively, were fueled by primary races that boosted Democratic turnout.