Despite having withdrawn, Nikki Haley still garnered over 20% of the early vote in Washington’s Republican presidential primary

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers used the state’s low-inten­si­ty pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to help put both Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump over the top with majori­ties need­ed for their par­ty nom­i­na­tions last night. But a size­able chunk of the the elec­torate found ways to reg­is­ter dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their 2024 choic­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the GOP side, with Trump’s near­ly-decade long takeover of the Repub­li­can Party.

A quar­ter those vot­ing in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry cast bal­lots for can­di­dates who’ve already dropped out of the race. Nik­ki Haley was top­ping 20% of the statewide vote, with more than a third in pop­u­lous King County’s ear­ly count. She was over 30% in San Juan and Jef­fer­son Counties.

Joe Biden was bet­ter off. The Pres­i­dent was receiv­ing 85.68% of bal­lots count­ed from those vot­ing in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

A late pre­elec­tion protest had urged vot­ers to pick “Uncom­mit­ted Del­e­gates” as a protest against Biden’s sup­port for Israel as it con­tin­ues to bomb Gaza.

From the Colum­bia Plateau to the Pacif­ic Ocean, how­ev­er, the Biden votes were pil­ing up. “Uncom­mit­ted” was get­ting only 7.6% of the vote and bare­ly top­ping 10% in King Coun­ty. “Uncom­mit­ted” was the choice of 5% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Spokane and Clark coun­ties, and run­ning below 4% in blue-col­lar Grays Har­bor Coun­ty, an area of Wash­ing­ton that has become increas­ing­ly Republican.

The results con­firm a long­stand­ing Wash­ing­ton tra­di­tion, summed up by a ven­er­a­ble slo­gan: The emp­ty drum bangs loudest.

Cham­pi­ons of the Pales­tin­ian cause can put demon­stra­tors on I‑5, but they aren’t mus­ter­ing the votes to meet the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s thresh­old for receiv­ing so much as one del­e­gate. Pro­test­ers march through the streets chant­i­ng, “The peo­ple, unit­ed, will nev­er be defeat­ed”. But when bal­lots are mailed in, they lose.

The state has Demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions, though it has often shunned insur­gent Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. Years ago, future par­ty chair Howard Dean drew 8,000 peo­ple to a sum­mer ral­ly in West­lake Park. He was clob­bered half-a-year lat­er by Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the state’s 2004 precinct cau­cus­es. A Dean backer, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDer­mott, was out­vot­ed in his home precinct.

Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders filled are­nas with cheer­ing sup­port­ers and dom­i­nat­ed the state’s 2016 cau­cus­es. How­ev­er, Hillary Clin­ton received a greater num­ber of votes in the mean­ing­less Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry that Wash­ing­ton State held sev­er­al weeks lat­er. In 2020, days after a big Sanders ral­ly at the Taco­ma Dome, Joe Biden won our pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, hav­ing spent all of $600 in the state.

The anti-Trump vote does not bode well for the Repub­li­cans’ fall tick­et in Wash­ing­ton State. Ex-Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert is no friend of “the Don­ald”, but faces the drag of Trump atop the tick­et. In 2020, Trump man­aged to lose King Coun­ty by a mar­gin of almost half a mil­lion voters.

A far-right ultra MAGA Repub­li­can, Joe Kent, seems head­ed for a rematch with Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­semkamp Perez in South­west Washington’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. In Clark Coun­ty, the district’s main pop­u­la­tion cen­ter, a quar­ter of Repub­li­can votes were going against Trump.

We have near­ly eight months until the Novem­ber elec­tion, but Tues­day night pro­duced a cou­ple of trends. Despite com­plaints, a great many Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers like Biden. And while Nik­ki Haley did­n’t beat Don­ald Trump, her per­for­mance sug­gests there could be more cracks in Trump’s elec­toral coali­tion than in Biden’s.