Polls ahead of the general election showed the incumbent U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, locked neck-and-neck with Republican challenger state Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, in the race for Washington’s Third Congressional District.
Voters weighed in Tuesday, and the race, at least so far, isn’t as close as the polls predicted.
According to preliminary results released Tuesday night, Gluesenkamp Perez is ahead with 54.96% (143,417 votes) of the vote to Braun’s 44.18% (115,271 votes).
Republicans hoped to flip a seat that has supported President Donald Trump in all three races for the presidency while twice electing the Democrat congresswoman.
Trump endorsed Braun in the race.
On Tuesday night, noting that she has increased her margin of victory in the days following election night each time she has been on the ballot, Glusenkamp Perez declared victory in the race.
"The initial results are in. It's clear we're going to win this race,” she said in a statement. "Thank you to everybody who knocked on doors in wet socks, who made the calls, wrote the postcards, and had the difficult conversations with their neighbors. You took time out of your one precious life to do this work alongside me, and I'll be forever grateful. They wanted this seat back. They thought they could buy it, but they don't understand how we work here. This seat is not for sale. Everyday people doing the quiet, necessary work to build community: that's how we push back against powerful people who think a seat in Congress is something you can buy.”
An updated ballot count is expected on Wednesday.
The Braun campaign didn’t concede on Tuesday night.
Things were relatively tame at The Loft in Chehalis where the Braun campaign held an election watch party. Braun urged attendees not to give up hope as he spoke to them shortly after the release of the preliminary results.
“We are winning by a significant number in several of the seven counties we have,” Braun told the crowd. “We have one county that’s not favorable to us right now, but we have a lot of votes left to count, and so we’re going to have to stay after it over the next few days to see where this lands.”
The preliminary results showed Braun with a modest lead in Cowlitz County and Wahkiakam County and a large lead among voters in Lewis County and Thurston County. He appears to be struggling most in Clark County, where Gluesenkamp Perez has collected 61.12% of the vote in the district’s most populous county.
In a brief interview with The Chronicle, Braun recognized significant momentum for Democrats across the country, but said he was still holding out hope, referring to many ballots left to count in the district.
“It’s a pretty tough year, there’s no getting around it," Braun told The Chronicle. “Definitley a blue wave, and I thought we might break here, and I still think there’s a chance.”
Washington state GOP Chair Jim Walsh, who was at the event Tuesday night, put on a particularly optimistic face despite national trends and the preliminary results for Braun’s campaign, referring to Washington as “a bulwark against the blue wave.”
“Are the turnout numbers in Lewis and Cowlitz going to be high enough to offset the later ballots in Clark?” Walsh said. “Thats a 50-50 bet. This is going to be a congressional race that’s decided like Friday or Monday.”
As of around 9:30 Tuesday evening, 260,925 ballots had been counted in the district. A total of about 319,000 were tallied in 2024.
The district encompassing the entirety of Southwest Washington is one of the most competitive House districts in the country.
Repeated polls in the area have shown a neck-and-neck race slightly favoring Washington state Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia. But even that predicted lead was never more than a couple percentage points and always fell well within the margin of error. A recent locally sourced poll from DHM Research commissioned by Oregon Public Broadcasting once again declared the race a tossup and gave Braun a one percentage point edge when voters were asked who they would support or, if they were unsure, which direction they leaned.
According to that poll, which surveyed 543 likely voters, 48% of those surveyed said they were sure or leaning toward voting for Braun while 47% said the same of Gluesenkamp Perez. About 5% said they were firmly unsure of how they would vote.
Braun led Gluesenkamp Perez in the primary election in August by a couple of percentage points while a more progressive Democrat, Brent Hennrich, hauled in more than 15% of the vote. No other candidate in the packed field attracted more than 5% of the votes.
The race for Southwest Washington has been a contest between moderates seeking to describe one another as extreme.
With the two locked in a dead heat, the race has attracted significant spending from across the country and aggressive advertising in both directions. Gluesenkamp Perez has led the race in direct campaign contributions, currently totaling nearly $9.5 million, according to the Federal Election Commission. Braun has raised approximately $3.3 million in direct contributions.
Both sides have also attracted significant outside spending from partisan political action committees. Recent reporting from The Washington State Standard showed that roughly $11 million had been spent on direct opposition to Gluesenkamp Perez from her competition and a collection of Republican-aligned committees.
According to that same report, nearly $7 million has been spent by the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign and Democrat-aligned committees to oppose Braun.
Where the Braun campaign has painted Gluesenkamp Perez’s appeal to blue collar Americans as disingenuous, his opponent’s campaign has worked hard to connect him with the Iran war, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other unpopular policies of President Trump.
An ad campaign from Gluesenkamp Perez has targeted workplace safety concerns at the family-run company Braun leads, Braun Northwest, which outfits emergency vehicles. Braun has labeled the campaign as dishonest and “ruthless.”
Gluesenkamp Perez came into the contest after winning election in 2022 against former Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent by just over 2,500 votes. She defeated Kent a second time two years later in 2024 by a larger margin of more than 15,000 votes. Both races were within a few percentage points.
Since her election, the congresswoman has marked herself as a firm centrist, last year being named as the most likely Democrat to break with her party. That tendency has landed her in hot water with other members of her party, most recently at the end of August when she and one other Democrat joined the majority of Republicans in the House to salvage a piece of legislation that would have died without their votes.
On the other side of the contest, Braun has positioned himself as relatively center compared to Kent, highlighting his career in the U.S. Navy, his position leading the family business, and his many years as a Washington state senator.
Braun has served in the Washington state Senate since winning a seat in 2012 and taking office at the start of 2013. He has also served in leadership within the Senate, most recently serving as minority leader since the state's 2021-2022 legislative session and working on the Republican Budget Committee and as a member of the state Senate Ways and Means Committee.
In his campaign, Braun has garnered significant support from the Republican Party. Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson, with an entourage of other Republican representatives, visited Braun Northwest to rally in hopes of boosting Braun’s chances headed into the general election.
