For this Hot Seat post, I take a look at what could be the fierce battle over a seat that holds a member of the Republican leadership, Chair of the Republican Conference Cathy McMorris Rodgers. I’m not the first one to jump onto the idea that this race will be competitive, as I talk about later, but it is a battle for the Republican defensive line in a state that continues to shift leftward, and may have little buffer. And through it all, the biggest batch of tossup voters have their motivations and priorities completely unknown, a mystery that only the 2018 elections will prove. New state legislation looms large in this race, as a Democratic trifecta seizes the advantage. This perfect storm creates a giant question mark hanging over Eastern Washington that promises a fight.

Crystal Ball: Likely R

Cook Political Report: Likely R

Inside Elections: Likely R

My Model: Tossup/Tilts R

District Overview:

Washington’s 5th rests against the state’s eastern border and is widely considered to be entirely rural, but unlike the district in eastern Oregon that’s spread out, this district is heavily centered on Spokane county, which in 2016, made up over 70% of the votes coming in. In fact, of the counties that made up over 5% of the vote, Clinton won Whitman county, situated directly below Spokane, and Trump underperformed in all but Stevens. Trump’s, and in general, Republican’s huge margins in the rurals have kept this district technically right leaning if you use measures like PVI, which only show presidential margin, but you can see above that in raw vote, he won less than a majority.

The Fundamentals:

Washington differs from most other states by offering a Top Two system for all its political offices, which is great for analysis because it allows us to see how third party presidential voters act on all levels. First, let’s take a look at the presidential 3rd party performance in the 5th district, snapshotted here (showing all of Walla Walla county, where the correct district border is in these calculations). First up is Gary Johnson in yellow, who received 5.58% here, his best district in the state, though he lagged in the northern parts. Next in purple is the write-in vote, which took in another3.48%, above the statewide performance. Lastly is Stein in green, who took in 1.67%, a tad lower than statewide. You can see with all of them the larger concentration in Spokane and especially Whitman.

The next maps show first from orange to green how third parties performed here relative to previous years. Here, they excelled in the populous Spokane county and the southern portion. They were still mostly up in the north but not as much. The map to the right displays the change in the margin alone from 2012 to 2016.

The plot after this plots the first map (3rd party performance) on the x-axis while the margin change is plotted on the y-axis. Bubble size is by population and the red bubbles are the counties that are in WA-5.

There’s a couple of key points to see here, the first being that there appears to be a loose correlation that as 3rd parties did relatively better, the margin shifted towards the Democrats. This happened in virtually every state across the nation. The exception here is Seattle in King county, which went overwhelmingly Clinton in the Democratic primary and the general. The other is that Spokane and a lot of others have very high third parties but experienced Democrat margin loss, the exception being Whitman county. The great thing that’s special about Washington is that it’s plain to see.

In the presidential contest statewide, Clinton beat Trump 52.5–36.83, and in the popular vote with 1,742,718 voters to Trump’s 1,221,747. However, in the top 2 governor’s race, Democrat Jay Inslee won with only a little more of the raw percentage, 54.25–45.49, but about the same number of votes. Inslee bagged 1,760,520 voters, while his Republican challenger Bill Bryant took home 1,476,346. While there was likely some crossover voting, it is fair to assume (but not take as truth) that most 3rd party voters were likely voters of Bill Bryant. This isn’t necessarily the case in the 5th district, Clinton got 125,112 voters while Trump got 166,765. Inslee took home 142,634 votes to Bryant’s 181,305 or a 56–44 split where each took about half of the third-party voters. In Spokane county, Trump received 113,435 votes while Clinton got 93,767. However, at the gubernatorial level, Bryant increased to 124,576 voters, while Inslee got 106,009. These figures seem to indicate that third party voters may be more Democratic here than they are statewide, good news for Democrats as those are high turnout voters, which in the midterms is everything.

The other thing to look for is the performance in the most dominant geographical area, Spokane county. This first plot shows the percentage performance that Republicans took in Spokane in the presidential race, both raw and two party, and gubernatorial.

You can see a slight decline over time at the presidential level, though in 2016, the two- party result spiked a bit, showing that 3rd parties ate into the Democrats, an encouraging sign for Republicans if those don’t flip over. There is also a decline in the gubernatorial race, falling below the two-party presidential line, which it didn’t do during the Obama elections. Spokane seems to be holding on, if it doesn’t have some bumps, but realistically the bottom could fall out at any time in this state that is trending blue rapidly. This next plot displays the Republican lean of the district over time and it shows that to maintain that neutral trend in the county, it needs to be trending Republican compared to the state. While this is a good sign for McMorris Rodgers, one must wonder how long this could last, and if a midterm wave election would drag it down regardless.

Over the last two cycles where Romney received 53% and then Trump fell to under 50, as the GOP gubernatorial fell a similar 58.18% down to 55.97%. McMorris Rodgers has also fallen, from 61.9% in 2012 to 60.7% in 2014, and finally, 59.6% in 2016. The model punishes those whose trends track too closely to the top of the ticket if it believes that there will be a wave there, and WA-5 hasn’t really distinguished itself in that way. The chart below, courtesy of Decision Desk’s Miles Coleman, shows how WA-5 has performed in all of the statewide races in recent electoral history. It illustrates the trend that even though the Democratic share is the same, the republican side is decreasing a bit, but relative to the state, the lean is only increasing.

The Personal Touch:

Washington has several unique factors to it that adds some error to handicapping the race. The first is that it holds its elections entirely by mail-in voting, which means that it has one of the highest participation rates in the nation (65.7% of eligible voters vs. 60.2% nationally), and there may not be a huge drop-off even though there is no race at the top of the ticket. This doesn’t necessarily help either party as Democrats may be more enthused, but voting effort for Republicans does not create a huge hurdle, but it also gives more voters a chance that would be lower propensity to vote, helping Democrats.

After Democrats won a closely watched special senate election in a suburban seat, they controlled the trifecta of all branches of state government, and quickly passed a package of voter rights laws that will likely boost the left in this race for the upcoming cycle. The big one was automatic voter registration, which will by default sign you up to vote anytime you apply to change your address on a driver’s license or ID card. Some Democratic estimates, though probably optimistic, hope to register as many as 1 million new eligible voters.

There has also been some recent polling here. By the end of 2017, Gallup had Trump’s approval at 38% nationwide but only 34% in Washington, a couple of points lower than he got in the election. An Elway poll went into a little bit more detail in its polling that came out in early 2018. The state generic congressional ballot has Democrats up 45–35, but up by 14% when filtered through a screen down to those that are very likely to vote. In this district specifically, the generic result of a Republican against Democrat at only a 41–37 advantage. In legislative races, one of the biggest advantages came from a 28-point gap advantage among women voters.

The Republicans:

Cathy McMorris Rodgers is a formidable candidate, being part of leadership as the highest ranking Republican woman and the Chairman of the House Republican Conference. This gives her great connections and the likelihood that she will be able to raise a lot of campaign funds for her election on top of her experience in Washington politics since 1994 and congresswoman since 2004. Over that time, conservative interest groups have been dropping her rating down at a consistent rate. It remains to be seen whether she will move to get their enthusiastic support or point to these ratings to show an independent streak. She has consistently won about 60% in her races, but peaked a couple of cycles ago, and has been declining a bit since.

Republicans have not been sleeping on the job here, either, as the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Paul Ryan-affiliated SuperPAC has set up a field office here. The PAC’s executive director and noted blue wave preparer Corry Bliss declared, “CLF is taking nothing for granted as we focus on our mission to maintain the House Republican majority.” They have not placed ad buys and probably won’t, as McMorris Rodgers has over $700k in cash on hand, compared to Democrat Lisa Brown’s $200k, and can buy her own ads for cheaper, coming directly from the candidate.

The Democrats:

The Democrats pulled a bit of a recruiting coup here with their likely nominee, Lisa Brown, who has been in politics since the early 90s. She has been either in the State House or State Senate from 1993 to 2013 and was the Majority Leader for the last 8 years, giving her great name ID and an excellent infrastructure into state politics, which will help with fundraising and support. Since she left, she has been serving as the chancellor of Washington State University Spokane, which only has 1,500 students but may be interesting to see if she gets a boost in that area. One thing that could drag her down is that she voted for one of the largest tax increases in state history when she started in 1993, but has since then opposed a measure to raise the gas tax. Her focus so far for her campaign has been against the tax reform bill, primarily. The DCCC has made this seat a priority after releasing an internal poll (so take with a grain of salt) that showed Brown only losing 47–43. It’s clear that national groups will be spending here and the candidate themselves has a network to tap into, as the DNC signals Washington is a target. Lately with regards to investing in the race, Democrats have begun to do what they do best in these targeted races: waffle.

The Others:

Since Washington state runs on a top two party primary system, where only the top two vote getters advance to the general, third parties are huge in presidential races but non-existent everywhere else. This means that though some people are running as Libertarians or Independents, they are likely to get shut out of the race and will be a non-factor.

The Verdict:

I don’t know if I agree on a pure tossup level unless Trump’s approval is falling even more than current levels, but this race is definitely competitive and both parties seem to know it. The force of a wave year in a seat trending blue, the grab bag of 3rd party voters that are leaving the GOP in droves in other big elections so far this cycle, and the new voting laws make this closer than it appears from measures like PVI in this state. All I know is that it’s two juggernaut candidates facing off and this should likely be a win in the single digits, whichever way it’s going, so I don’t want to disagree too much. Republicans nationwide should hope that they are able to hold onto third party voters that voted downballot for them in 2016, because if not, they are in for a lot of electoral trouble, starting with a member of leadership.

A huge shout out to the following people for helping me and using their data:

Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman)

Everybody at Daily Kos for their pres-by-district breakdown

Uselectionatlas

Photo Credits: Wikimedia

Disclaimer: This is meant to be a nonpartisan analysis from results in an impartial model. It is not meant to advise targeting or party targeting and is available to the public.