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Brad Shannon maintains this blog. He is political editor at The Olympian and can be reached at 360-753-1688 or bshannon@theolympian.com.

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Washington Poll projects R-71 win by 81,000 votes

• Published November 04, 2009

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A heck of a lot of votes remain to be counted statewide, but University of Washington researchers have crunched the numbers and say Referendum 71's expansion of domestic partner rights to include "everything but marriage" is an electoral winner.

The margin: 81,529 votes. That's according to Matt Barreto, a UW professor and a principal in the Washington Poll, which also predicted a R-71 victory last week in its pre-election survey announced Oct. 27.

"The projections suggest Ref 71 will be approved by about 52-48 statewide when all votes are counted," Barreto wrote in an email. At least 389,665 votes remain to be counted statewide, according to the Office of the Secretary of State's web site, but many are in King County which is giving the measure a big thumbs up.

In response to questions I sent him, Barreto elaborated on King County's role in the outcome:

We have R71 eventually winning by 81,000 and this appears to be entirely driven by King County. The rest of Puget Sound is sort of a wash, barely going in favor of R71. Central and Eastern Washington appear to be way out against Ref 71, by margins even larger than the polls predicted. Most thought R71 would lose east of the cascades, but not by such a huge margin. At the same time, we knew well that it would win in King County, so that is the real key here.

Why is this the case? One simple answer is that there is a larger, more active GLBT community in King County, and in general, this social interaction tends to lead people to dismiss their stereotypes and to be either neutral or supportive of GLBT issues.

Another observation from Barreto: The UW Poll asked if voters if they had gay friends or family members. The finding: People with gay friends and family were more likely to vote for R-71, and those who didn't tended to want to vote against it.

The poll figures:

Yes, have gay freinds/family: 64% Yes; 32% No on R71 No, no gay friends/family: 46% Yes; 48% No on R71

Opponents were holding out hope today, and Joseph Backholm of the Family Policy Institute of Washington said he was encouraged by the early results showing R-71 ahead by just over 20,000 votes in a campaign where proponents outspent foes by a four-to-one margin.

"I'm not willing to close the book on this. There are still a lot of ballots out," he said this morning. But he also said it appears most outstanding ballots were in pro-71 counties: "The smart money is on the other side (winning) right now."

About 1 million votes have been counted and R-71 was passing by a 511,651 to 490,948 margin, according to the Office of the Secretary of State’s tally today.

Barreto said an analysis of results from ballots counted yesterday and today is in the works and should be available here.