My historic look didn’t drill down very far, just looked back in time a bit. But, if you do look down into the voting precincts, as this paper does very well, you find racism present in the vote:
The Yakima and Grant County results indicate that racially polarized voting exists in Central Washington and crosses party and ideological lines. While voters in these counties have consistently voted for more conservative candidates in most recent elections, Danielson outperformed all other candidates, and by very large margins. This is remarkable considering he did not campaign at all. In a similar Supreme Court election, conservative candidate Douglas McQuaid, who also did not campaign at all, received only 28 percent of the vote in Yakima, compared to 64 percent going for Danielson. Not only did Danielson significantly outperform McQuaid, but he also won more votes than the leading Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and Washington Governor who both campaigned vigorously during the election. The data show that Danielson received votes from the same precincts who preferred Cantwell to Baumgartner and Inslee to McKenna. This is in spite of Danielson raising no money, holding no campaign events, making no public statements, and receiving no meaningful endorsements. Voters in Central Washington, who were not provided a voter’s pamphlet, preferred Danielson to González in a party-neutral contest. This patterns revealed here a are textbook definition of racially polarized voting.
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