The polls were correct: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are very nearly tied in Washington

For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders are each gar­ner­ing an almost equal share of Wash­ing­ton State’s ground­break­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, ear­ly results show.

The pre­lim­i­nary num­bers almost exact­ly mir­ror the find­ings of a poll done by Sur­veyUSA for KING5 News last week, which we dis­cussed on Sat­ur­day.

In that poll, Biden and Sanders each received about 35% support.

Biden came in at 36% while Sanders got 35%.

And, as you can see, that’s sim­i­lar to how they are far­ing in the state’s actu­al nom­i­nat­ing event, with the caveat that many votes are left to count. (Sanders and Biden will like­ly both see their per­cent­ages increase as bal­lots are counted.)

The can­di­dates are also win­ning a near­ly equal num­ber of the state’s coun­ties so far. Sanders is ahead in the fol­low­ing counties:

1. King
2. San Juan
3. What­com
4. Skag­it
5. Jef­fer­son
6. Pacif­ic
7. Thurston
8. Chelan
9. Kit­ti­tas
10. Yaki­ma
11. Klick­i­tat
12. Okanogan
13. Fer­ry
14. Grant
15. Stevens
16. Adams
17. Franklin
18. Whit­man

Mean­while, Biden is ahead in the fol­low­ing counties:

1. Pierce
2. Sno­homish
3. Island
4. Clal­lam
5. Grays Har­bor
6. Mason
7. Kit­sap
8. Lewis
9. Wahki­akum
10. Cowlitz
11. Clark
12. Ska­ma­nia
13. Dou­glas
14. Ben­ton
15. Wal­la Walla
16. Colum­bia
17. Garfield
18. Asotin
19. Lin­coln
20. Spokane
21. Pend Oreille

The mar­gins sep­a­rat­ing the can­di­dates are con­sis­tent­ly not very large. In Grays Har­bor Coun­ty, less than forty votes sep­a­rate Biden and Sanders.

A total of 1,026,102 votes have been cast for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates thus far, while 531,271 votes have been cast either for Don­ald Trump or anoth­er Repub­li­can (there are 7,862 write-ins so far, account­ing for about 1.48% of the vote). That’s an advan­tage of near­ly two-to-one for the Democrats.

This advan­tage can be seen in the swing coun­ties as well as statewide.

In Pierce Coun­ty, Trump has 61,181 votes and there are nine hun­dred and twen­ty write-ins. Mean­while, there are 102,344 total votes on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side.

In Sno­homish Coun­ty, Trump has 48,458 votes (with eight hun­dred and fifty-sev­en Repub­li­can write-ins) and there are 106,155 total votes on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side. That means that more than twice as many vot­ers in Sno­homish have so far vot­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic bal­lot as opposed to the Repub­li­can ballot.

If Democ­rats run­ning down­bal­lot for statewide office can attract the sup­port of peo­ple vot­ing for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent, the Repub­li­can Par­ty faces the prospect of los­ing every sin­gle statewide race this November.

Grant­ed, this is a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, and the gen­er­al elec­tion will be a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment. But the high turnout in this pri­ma­ry makes this nom­i­nat­ing event quite dif­fer­ent than past pres­i­den­tial pri­maries. For the first time, both par­ties are using the results to allo­cate all their nation­al con­ven­tion delegates.

That’s result­ed in record pri­ma­ry turnout.

In fact, it is pos­si­ble that by the time this nom­i­nat­ing event is cer­ti­fied, we will have sur­passed the turnout in last year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

For the sake of com­par­i­son, in 2016, we had total turnout of 34.78% in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, which was mean­ing­less on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side.

We have almost already sur­passed that mark with 34.32% turnout as of Nom­i­nat­ing Night. Once all the bal­lots are count­ed, we’ll have blown past it.

In 2016, around 230,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucuses.

This year, we’re see­ing over a mil­lion par­tic­i­pants already in the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. That’s a more than four-fold par­tic­i­pa­tion increase between the 2016 and 2020 pres­i­den­tial cycles.

Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki is delighted.

“We’re thrilled that so many more peo­ple from across our state were able to make their voice heard in our nom­i­na­tion process this year,” said Podlodowski.

“478% more peo­ple vot­ing than last cycle shows the ener­gy to defeat Don­ald Trump and his enablers here in Wash­ing­ton State is undeniable.”