A colorful way to look at the primary

For all of those who share PolitickerWA.com's visual learning tendencies and general enthusiasm for maps, today's Spokesman-Review graphic is worth a look. The Lilac City paper has color coded the county-by-county results that are in so far for the governor's race where, as of Wednesday night, Chris Gregoire led Dino Rossi by four percentage points, 49.2 to 45.2.

The map assigns the color red to counties where Rossi leads, and blue to those in Gregoire's column, and the stronger the lead, the darker the color. Here is the map for Tuesday's primary. Contrast that with 2004's general election here.

With Spokane and Asotin Counties currently tilting blue, Tuesday's primary map adopts and eerie resemblance to another map political junkies know by heart.

But of course, it is just a primary.