Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs is ahead in his cam­paign to be retained as Wash­ing­ton’s chief elec­tions offi­cer and cus­to­di­an of records.

In Elec­tion Night returns, Hobbs had 49.97% — just shy of the mag­ic num­ber of fifty — while chal­lenger Julie Ander­son, the Pierce Coun­ty Audi­tor, had 46.92%. Anoth­er 3.1% of votes cast were for a write-in can­di­date, pre­sum­ably Repub­li­can Brad Klip­pert, who was endorsed by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Party.

Hobbs is a Demo­c­rat, while Ander­son ran with­out affil­i­at­ing with a party.

Hobbs cur­rent­ly holds a 50,938 vote lead over Ander­son statewide.

That’s few­er than the num­ber of write-in votes, which total 51,821. If Ander­son had the sup­port of those write-in vot­ers (again, pre­sum­ably ultra MAGA Repub­li­cans), she’d actu­al­ly be ahead of Hobbs by the slimmest of margins.

This is exact­ly the sce­nario that our polling sug­gest­ed could play out last month.

When we researched the con­test, we found Hobbs and Ander­son tied, with Ander­son hold­ing a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly insignif­i­cant one-point advantage.

How­ev­er, Ander­son­’s lead col­lapsed in a fol­low-up ques­tion once respon­dents were informed of the write-in can­di­da­cy of Klip­pert and gained the option of say­ing that they’d vote for him if they were cast­ing their ballot.

“Hobbs’ base of sup­port looks rather sol­id, while Anderson’s coali­tion looks awful­ly shaky,” I wrote last month. “To win this con­test, Ander­son needs Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers behind her, since Wash­ing­ton is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic lean­ing state and most Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are back­ing Hobbs along with many independents.”

One pas­sage lat­er, I added:

“If even a small per­cent­age of Repub­li­can vot­ers choose Klip­pert over Ander­son, her path to vic­to­ry could van­ish, putting the kibosh on Anderson’s chances.”

In 2020, we saw a jaw-drop­ping 20% of Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers choose a write-in can­di­date for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, dis­sat­is­fied with the choice of two Democ­rats list­ed on the bal­lot. That hap­pened in part because Joshua Freed spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey to reach Repub­li­can vot­ers and make them aware that they had the option of writ­ing him in rather than vot­ing for a Democrat.

Klip­pert did­n’t have those kind of resources for his “Write-in Klip­pert” cam­paign this year. But he did­n’t need to get any­where near 20% to be a fac­tor in this con­test. With Hobbs and Ander­son seem­ing­ly tied, and with Ander­son very depen­dent on Repub­li­can sup­port to be com­pet­i­tive against Hobbs, any num­ber of votes siphoned away from Ander­son had the poten­tial to be a difference-maker.

In a num­ber of coun­ties east of the Cas­cades, the write-in vote is in the dou­ble dig­its. In Stevens, it’s 10.91%. In Franklin, it’s 10.64%. In Fer­ry, it’s 11.92%.

Those are lit­tle coun­ties, but when you add them all up, it’s tens of thou­sands of votes. The write-in vote was also greater than the statewide per­cent­age in some of the larg­er east­ern coun­ties such as Spokane, Ben­ton, and Chelan.

Hobbs is win­ning a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of swing coun­ties in addi­tion to the usu­al three Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­holds, which is a promis­ing sign for him.

Ander­son has more coun­ties over­all, but most of the coun­ties in her col­umn are pret­ty small. The major excep­tion is Pierce Coun­ty, where Ander­son is from.

Here’s how it breaks down:

An esti­mat­ed 634,848 bal­lots are on hand and await­ing pro­cess­ing statewide, accord­ing to the Sec­re­tary of State’s vot­er turnout chart. Most of them are from coun­ties that Hobbs is win­ning: 152,000 in King, 80,000 in Clark, 55,000 in Kit­sap, 78,500 from Sno­homish, 30,000 from Thurston, 25,500 from Whatcom.

That’s a prob­lem for Anderson.

Ander­son­’s own office reports that only 10,689 bal­lots are await­ing pro­cess­ing in Pierce Coun­ty. If that’s an accu­rate num­ber, it is a rather small fig­ure com­pared to the num­ber of bal­lots present­ly out­stand­ing in King and Snohomish.

Pierce’s turnout cur­rent­ly sits at 41.47%, high­er than King’s turnout and Sno­homish’s turnout, at least until their addi­tion­al bal­lots are counted.

King, Pierce, Sno­homish, and sev­er­al oth­er coun­ties are all due to release an updat­ed tab­u­la­tion tomor­row at around either 4 or 5 PM in the evening. We’ll be keep­ing a close eye on this con­test until cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on Novem­ber 28th.