Thurston County joins the Yes on I‑522 camp as margin of defeat narrows again

Those of us who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ed Ini­tia­tive 522 (to label genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods) have some good news to cheer tonight: Thurston Coun­ty has switched sides and joined the Yes camp as of the lat­est tal­ly, bring­ing the total num­ber of coun­ties in favor of I‑522 to five.

Mean­while, the Yes vote statewide climbed to 47.05%, push­ing the No vote below 53%, to 52.95%. We are still pro­ject­ing that I‑522 will be defeat­ed, but it appears that the mar­gin of vic­to­ry for I‑522’s oppo­nents could be some­what slim, which rein­forces our view that I‑522 could have passed last year, had it been on the bal­lot like I‑502 (mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion) and Ref­er­en­dum 74 (mar­riage equality).

Oth­er coun­ties in west­ern Wash­ing­ton may also flip before the count­ing ends. Sno­homish and Island are both edg­ing clos­er to being in the Yes camp; the no vote in each is now below 50.40%. The high no vote in Pierce, Spokane and oth­er key swing coun­ties is also com­ing down, sug­gest­ing that the Yes on I‑522 cam­paign’s response to the No side’s mis­in­for­ma­tion had a pos­i­tive and pro­nounced effect.

Had I‑522 start­ed out in a bet­ter posi­tion on Elec­tion Night, I’d prob­a­bly be dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a come from behind win in this post.

But unfor­tu­nate­ly the $23 mil­lion plus spent by Mon­san­to, DuPont, and the big processed food com­pa­nies that tried to hide behind the skirts of the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion had an effect. The no side went to great lengths to spread fear, uncer­tain­ty, and doubt (FUD), tar­get­ing vot­ers in swing coun­ties. The good news is, they are not going to get the blowout win that they want­ed in Wash­ing­ton. The mes­sage they were hop­ing to send will not be sent.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, it appears that as these big cor­po­ra­tions increas­ing­ly dumped more mon­ey into their cam­paign cof­fers, they got less of a return. Vot­ers per­ceived that pow­er­ful inter­ests were try­ing to buy their votes and pur­chase an elec­tion (in part based on news cov­er­age and adver­tis­ing) and react­ed to that.

Our hope is that by the time the elec­tion is cer­ti­fied, the spread will be even nar­row­er, and the No vote will be below 52%.