Marie Gluesenkamp Perez remains ahead of Joe Kent as late ballots dwindle in number

After a fourth con­sec­u­tive day of count­ing, Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gres­sion­al hope­ful Marie Glue­senkamp Perez remains ahead of ultra MAGA Repub­li­can rival Joe Kent in the race for U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al District.

Though Kent gained some ground, his momen­tum in the late bal­lots has not put him on a tra­jec­to­ry for vic­to­ry. His win­dow to over­take Glue­senkamp Perez is clos­ing, and he and his cam­paign know it. Glue­senkamp Perez is not declar­ing vic­to­ry yet, but her cam­paign sees a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry as the most like­ly outcome.

“With today’s lat­est count of bal­lots from Cowlitz Coun­ty and Clark Coun­ty, Joe Kent once again fell well short of the gains he need­ed in order to change the out­come of this race,” said Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for the Glue­senkamp Perez cam­paign. “While we expect the mar­gin to tight­en a bit more as the final out­stand­ing bal­lots are count­ed, Marie’s lead now looks all but insurmountable.”

“It’s clear that the vot­ers of the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict are choos­ing Marie Glue­senkamp Perez’s approach of mod­er­a­tion and prag­ma­tism over Joe Ken­t’s tox­ic pol­i­tics of extrem­ism and division.”

Ken­t’s media-hos­tile cam­paign refused to offer any com­men­tary or analy­sis on the returns when asked for reac­tion by The Seat­tle Times.

Clark Coun­ty, home to Amer­i­ca’s Van­cou­ver, is cru­cial to Glue­senkamp Perez’s chances. It has 327,049 reg­is­tered vot­ers — more than the rest of the dis­trict com­bined — and many of them are Democ­rats, inde­pen­dents, or lean Repub­li­can rather than hold­ing unyield­ing ultra MAGA beliefs like Kent and his followers.

Glue­senkamp Perez has 55.58% of the Clark Coun­ty vote as of this lat­est count. Her advan­tage over Kent in the coun­ty slipped only a lit­tle today, to 21,822 votes, down from 21,980 yes­ter­day, con­tin­u­ing a trend we’ve seen the past two days.

Mean­while, up in Cowlitz, Kent increased his lead from 3,203 votes to 3,968 votes. That cut the dis­trict-wide gap down to 4,959 votes.

Mass media out­lets have not yet called the race, but the num­ber of out­stand­ing bal­lots is dwin­dling. Only a third of the dis­tric­t’s six coun­ties tal­lied bal­lots today — specif­i­cal­ly, Clark and Cowlitz. Clark is Glue­senkamp Perez’s base; Cowlitz is the most pop­u­lous coun­ty in the dis­trict that is sup­port­ing Kent.

Clark is down to 20,000 bal­lots and plans to tal­ly more tomor­row — a Saturday.

Cowlitz has 2,300 bal­lots left and will report again on Mon­day, Novem­ber 14th. Pacif­ic and Lewis coun­ties will also report on Mon­day. Wahki­akum does­n’t plan to report again till cer­ti­fi­ca­tion day. Ska­ma­nia plans to tab­u­late again on Tues­day, the 15th. Thurston Coun­ty will join Clark in run­ning anoth­er tal­ly tomorrow.

A Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry in WA-03 would be huge: the sig­na­ture accom­plish­ment of the cycle for Democ­rats in the Pacif­ic North­west. The elec­tion of Glue­senkamp Perez would bol­ster Demo­c­ra­t­ic efforts to pre­vent Kevin McCarthy from get­ting a major­i­ty (McCarthy enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly cam­paigned with Kent) and keep an extrem­ist like Majorie Tay­lor Greene out of the region’s con­gres­sion­al district.

We’ll con­tin­ue to keep an eye on this con­test and bring you updates.