For the past 3 elections in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, Democrats have been gaining ground on Doc Hastings. From the dismal 34% of Craig Mason (no offense Craig) in 2002, the semi-well funded Sandy Matheson in 2004 with 37%, to the wildly underfunded 2006 Richard Wright campaign with 41% there is a serious trend in play and something to watch in 2008.  With record Central Washington turnout in the 2008 Democratic Caucus, and the dismal performance of the WA GOP caucus, 2008 could very well be the year the 4th CD trends back to it’s Democratic roots.     

Hm.

Actually you can chart it back to 1998 when the glorious Gordon Allen Pross garnered 24 percent of the vote.  But to get the unequivocal line upward, you would have to leave out Jim Davis in 2000, who bested Craig Mason by a few percentage points.

That was meant to be snarky.  It is impossible not to be skeptical, and I think we can account for the shifts in percentages to external factors moreso than local voting trend-lines.  Craig Mason under-performed by a few percentage points because he was perceived as a big L liberal egghead college professor type.  Richard Wright over-performed by a few percentage points because the year 2006 saw a Democratic wave, the effect on the Fourth Congressional district were those few points.  Thus the typical result would have to be Jim Davis’s 2000 and Sandy Matheson’s 2004 result of… 37 percent.

I suspect some things offset — presidential election means entrenched partisan voting down-ballot, with a general Democratic year.  Um… better finance (He is the dream candidate in that regard, right?  Self-Financer?)  will bring us…

The trend line back to 1998, skipping over 2000 for convenience, continues!  3 more points still!

But the dawning of a new Partisan order suggests some districts you don’t expect to vote Democratic will indeed do so.  But from the point of view of someone in Seattle or DC, manning purse-strings, it makes complete sense that they would scour about and skip past this and deem, say the fifth district as a better candidate for that.  Then again, that district was a disappointment in 2006 — somewhere in the last wave of suspected possibilities for the political party, and the candidate did not perform much better than Richard Wright’s shoe-string campaign.

I thought Doc was supposed to retire.  Or is he still holding out for the Republican takeover of Congress when he gets to get his dream position of chair of the Rules Committee.  (Maybe he can give up that dream, say, after the 2012 election — which is the next time I can possibly see the Republicans take back the House?)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Doc Hastings and the 4th Congressional District of Wash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.