Late ballots continue to bolster Manka Dhingra in 45th LD, confounding Republicans

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate hope­ful Man­ka Dhin­gra has end­ed the first week of count­ing in the August Top Two elec­tion in an incred­i­bly strong posi­tion, hav­ing gained dis­tance from Repub­li­can oppo­nent Jiny­oung Lee Englund with each and every tab­u­la­tion thus far. Dhin­gra’s elec­toral per­for­mance demon­strates that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty was very suc­cess­ful in get­ting out the vote last month, which bodes well for the par­ty’s chances of retak­ing the state Sen­ate this autumn.

A vic­to­ry for Dhin­gra would give Democ­rats twen­ty-five seats in the Sen­ate and the abil­i­ty to bring pro­gres­sive school fund­ing solu­tions up for a vote.

Dhin­gra end­ed the week with 51.45% of the vote — near­ly ten per­cent­age points above Englund, who dropped to 41.54%.

On Elec­tion Night, Dhin­gra had 50.51% of the vote, while Englund had 42.57%. As men­tioned, the gap between the two can­di­dates has con­tin­ued to widen, which is def­i­nite­ly not some­thing that Repub­li­cans expect­ed to happen.

King Coun­ty Repub­li­can Chair Lori Sote­lo released a state­ment ear­li­er this week in which she pre­dict­ed that Englund would start to make up ground:

It’s my under­stand­ing that there are 5,000 or so bal­lots wait­ing to be count­ed at King Coun­ty Elec­tions and more to come in over the next few days. Late vot­ers trend our way. I expect the gap to nar­row giv­ing Jiny­oung Englund a strong plat­form head­ing into November.

Wrong on both counts, Lori.

Late bal­lots can actu­al­ly trend in any num­ber of direc­tions. Last year, late bal­lots helped sink the can­di­dates of Democ­rats Jason Ritchie and Tere­sa Pur­cell, who were lead­ing on Elec­tion Night in the 5th and 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­tricts, respectively.

But in the 45th this year, the late bal­lots have favored the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, to the evi­dent con­ster­na­tion and con­fu­sion of Repub­li­can operatives.

What’s going on here? Well, to put it sim­ply, Democ­rats suc­ceed­ed in mount­ing a very suc­cess­ful get-out-the-vote (GOTV) oper­a­tion while Repub­li­can attack ads back­fired hor­ri­bly, gen­er­at­ing even more votes for Man­ka Dhingra.

Strong field oper­a­tions are a clas­sic hall­mark of win­ning Demo­c­ra­t­ic cam­paigns. Long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty work­ers can feel very good about the par­ty’s efforts in the 45th in this elec­tion, which con­tin­ue to bear fruit, day after day.

Repub­li­cans made a big bold bet when they recruit­ed Jiny­oung Lee Englund to run against Dhin­gra a few months ago, pri­or­i­tiz­ing attrib­ut­es like par­ty expe­ri­ence over com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tions (which were Andy Hill’s strength as a candidate).

That bet is not pay­ing off.

As men­tioned, also not pay­ing off are the mil­lion plus dol­lars Repub­li­cans have spent fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to tar­nish Man­ka Dhin­gra’s reputation.

Repub­li­cans will be loathe to give up their pow­er in the state­house, so we ful­ly expect they’ll be back with more attack ads in the autumn in a des­per­ate attempt to stave off the loss of their frag­ile Sen­ate majority.