Second 2017 general count in: Manka Dhingra increases her lead over Jinyoung Englund

Last night, after ini­tial returns in Wash­ing­ton State’s 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict showed Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Man­ka Dhin­gra with a big lead, Jiny­oung Lee Englund post­ed a tweet thank­ing her sup­port­ers and promis­ing “an update tomorrow”:

Want to say a big thank you to every­one who has sup­port­ed me these last 6.5 months. It’s been a long road with its ups & downs, but I am hum­bled & grate­ful for friends made & expe­ri­ences shared. There are still a lot of votes left to be count­ed, we will have an update tomorrow.

King Coun­ty Elec­tions has just pub­lished updat­ed elec­tion results which include sev­er­al thou­sand new­ly tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots. With the Day Two count in, Man­ka Dhin­gra has expand­ed her share of the vote from 55.42% last night to 55.45% today, while Englund’s has con­tract­ed, going from 44.58% to 44.55%.

Dhin­gra had 16,156 votes as of Elec­tion Night, while Englund had 12,997 — a lead of 3,159. As of this after­noon, Dhin­gra now has 17,112 votes, while Englund has 13,749 — putting Dhin­gra 3,363 votes ahead of Englund.

This could be the begin­ning of a trend that mir­rors what we saw in the August Top Two elec­tion. In that pre­lim­i­nary round, Dhin­gra start­ed out with a strong lead, but then con­tin­ued to expand it as count­ing went on, con­found­ing and irri­tat­ing Repub­li­cans, who had expect­ed the gap to tight­en — not widen.

In Wash­ing­ton’s vote-by-mail sys­tem, it is pos­si­ble to erase an Elec­tion Night deficit and come from behind to win — if the race is rea­son­ably close to start with.

Roger Good­man did it in 45th in 2010, the same year that Andy Hill was first elect­ed. Good­man nar­row­ly trailed his Repub­li­can oppo­nent Kevin Haist­ings on Elec­tion Night, but was able to close the gap in sub­se­quent counts. He over­took his rival as of the fourth count and held on from there to win.

But for Jiny­oung Englund to mount a come from behind vic­to­ry, she’d have to have made up sig­nif­i­cant ground in today’s count, even more than Good­man did on that sec­ond day of count­ing in 2010. And she did­n’t do that. Instead, she fell fur­ther behind. Tomor­row and Fri­day could bring more of the same.

We can’t know how many bal­lots are in the mail head­ed to King Coun­ty Elec­tions, so we can’t say an Englund vic­to­ry is math­e­mat­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble… but we project that Sen­a­tor-elect Dhin­gra will win eas­i­ly when the elec­tion is certified.