For me, the most interesting election in the county this year was between a candidate for the North Thurston School district and her opponent, who had endorsed here. In a more perfect world, no one would have voted for Stephanie Scott. She did not campaign and had endorsed Esperanza Badillo-Diiorio weeks before the primary election….
Category: Thurston County
Three ways to think about pedestrian deaths in Thurston County between 2006 and 2020
Somewhere back in the peak of the pandemic, there was a popular Facebook post here in Olympia that I thought was interesting. The post pointed at the signs distributed by Intercity Transit asking people to slow down. The social poster asked why we didn’t have signs asking for people to stop committing other crimes. The…
How an incumbent sheriff loses
Sheriffs have incumbency power. A lot of elected officials do, but with the acquittal of Sheriff Ed Troyer in Pierce County last week, it is worth looking into how sheriffs stick around and how some of them lose. Troyer survived the court case (which would not have kicked him out of office), and will also…
A deeper look into Sheriff Sanders’ Thurston County
In my original post about the results from the 2022 general election, I vaguely pointed to results comparing how well successful candidates Sheriff Sanders and Senator Murray did against each other. Basically, both won by doing well in the dense, urban part of Thurston County. But, when you take their precinct results and compare them,…
Some maps to help you understand the November 2022 General Election in Thurston County
1. Sanders won the Sheriff’s race leaning on urban voters, but… Here are Sanders’ results in raw numbers. Blue he did better, and red worse. This is the prototypical Thurston County partisan map. Democratic candidates tend to do better and run up the score in the urban areas, and try to tamp down their losses…
The semi-rural breakwater in Thurston County politics
I’ve oftentimes described the geographic nature of (mostly) partisan politics in Thurston County. If you are a Democrat or left of center, you try to drive up your margins in the areas close to downtown Olympia. Then you drive outwards in all directions and try to win as many other precincts as possible until you…
How crossover votes doomed Bud Blake (and more maps from the election weeks ago)
Something I started noticing the last few months is how the geography of Independent and Democratic crossover voters seemed to follow a certain logic. For example, if you took the precincts in Thurston County that voted for both Hilary Franz for lands commissioner and Gary Edwards for county commissioner, they seemed to generally fall into…
Is the Independent era in Thurston County (and Washington) over?
Buried deep inside the results of the recent Crosscut/Elway poll was a surprising result, something that hasn’t happened in over four years, and not with any consistency since the Bush administration. For the first time since January 2014, more respondents in a state wide poll said that they were Democrats and not Independents. In the last…
5 things to take from this year’s Thurston County primary election, mostly in map form
1. Holmes got smoked. This doesn’t take much explaining, his overall percentage (32 percent) of the vote being what it is, seeing Stuart Holmes mapped out doesn’t give you much more insight. At the very least, he follows the same north to south, liberal to conservative pattern that we usually see in Thurston County. Conservatives…
State conservation commission: Johnson and Mankmeyer should be removed from Thurston Conservation District board
Eric Johnson and Richard Mankmeyer should be removed from the Thurston Conservation District Board, according to a recommendation by the state conservation commission staff. Their recommendation is outlined in the final report of a months-long investigation by the conservation commission into the last few years at the Thurston Conservation District. The report to state commission…