As Primary Results Pause for a Break, Trends Take Shape

Tacoma, WA -

As of 1:36 AM this morning a total of 961,736 ballots have been cast, 518,753 for the Democratic Party and 382,501 for Republicans, with an estimated 302,667 remaining to be counted.

On the Republican side, Arizona Senator John McCain was reported by most major news organizations as the winner quite early on. At last count he held a 48.9% to 21.5% lead over his nearest challenger, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Arguably the most interesting aspect of the results is the tally for Mitt Romney, who so far has received 19.8% of the vote despite the fact that he suspended his campaign two weeks ago. Ron Paul was not able to match his caucus success, and is sitting in a distant fourth with 7.4% of the vote.

On the Democratic side Illinois Senator Barack Obama leads New York Senator Hillary Clinton 50.0%-46.9% and by a total of 16,017 votes. If patterns hold, Obama will win the primary by a margin slightly larger than his current 3.1% cushion. Of the remaining 300,000 votes left to be counted, roughly half come from counties like Chelan, Okanogan, King, Whatcom and Whitman where Obama leads by sizable margins, often above ten percentage points. The rest come from soft Clinton and soft Obama-leaning counties. The bulk of the uncounted ballots are estimated to be from King County, with some 110,000 still awaiting a tally.

Clark, Cowlitz, King, Kitsap, Klickitat, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Pierce, Thurston, Wahkiakum, and Whatcom Counties will announce more results later today beginning at 4:00 PM, while the rest of the state's counties will resume counting in the next day or two.

Results are update at http://vote.wa.gov/elections/wei/results.aspx