The Evergreen State became a smidgen more red in 2024, though it seems unlikely to become a battleground state anytime soon.
Across the country, Republicans saw broad growth during the election, maintaining the House of Representatives while regaining both the White House and Senate. Fueled by the top of the ticket, several Democratic strongholds reported higher than normal turnout for Republicans. New Jersey, for example, saw an additional 80,000 voters back President-elect Donald Trump in 2024 than in 2020. Trump, for his part, could be the first Republican presidential candidate since 2004 to win the nationwide popular vote, though that remains to be determined.
As more mail-in ballots have been counted, updated results show that Washington’s electorate leaned slightly more Republican, a trend that bucked initial national narratives in the immediate aftermath of the election.
While Washington hasn’t backed a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984 and hasn’t voted to send a Republican to the governor’s mansion since John Spellman in 1980, the Washington state Republican Party noted Wednesday that the party has seen growth in recent years.
“People who know Washington state politics know not to read major conclusions in preliminary results,” Washington State Republican Party Chairman and State Rep. Jim Walsh said in a statement. “Our 100 percent mail-in voting system is slow. We wait days, even weeks before we know for certain what the final results will be. So was the case this time, as media outlets jumped to wrong conclusions. This is just one reason the WAGOP would like to see a return to in-person, same-day voting. We’d be less prone to early media reports that turn out to be false.”
According to data from the Washington Secretary of State, Trump garnered the support of 39.2% of Washingtonians during his third presidential run, about a half percent more than the 38.77% he earned in 2020 and nearly 2.5% more support than he earned in 2016.
“We knew Trump was going to do slightly better this year than he did in 2020,” Walsh said. “We knew this from the conversations our field staff was having with people during door-knocking. We knew it from our campaign events and our internal polling. The ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was not as pervasive this year as it was before. And, most importantly, we’re seeing an incremental increase in Republican vote shares in ALL Washington races. So, the better presidential result was in line with that trend.”
While there was initial hope that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert could leverage his electoral success in King County to mount a successful campaign, Democrat Bob Ferguson beat Reichert by approximately 11% across the state.
“We still need to do better,” Walsh said. “We are still challenged in those statewide executive position races. But we’re getting more competitive overall. If Washington Republicans stay on this track, at the rate we’re going, we’ll be much more competitive in a few years.”
Following the election, Washington Republicans have less governing power than they had in 2020. Republican candidates gained in each of the nine races for statewide office in 2024 when compared to 2020, though the Democrat or Democrat-preferred candidate won each one.
Following former Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s resignation in 2021, Democrats have controlled all nine of Washington’s statewide offices, the first time that has occurred since 1964. Since her resignation, a Democrat has also held every statewide office on the West Coast.
Congressionally, Washington Republicans also struggled in the election. Michael Baumgartner, who ran to represent the state’s Fifth District, was the sole congressional candidate endorsed by the Washington State GOP to win election this year.
In Southwest Washington, while national Republicans targeted the Third Congressional District to boot Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the freshman won reelection in 2024 with a larger margin of victory than she did in her surprise win in 2022.
In Lewis County, Gluesenkamp Perez outpaced every Democratic candidate on the ballot by multiple points. Gluesenkamp Perez received 39% of the vote in the county, compared to the 31.84% Kamala Harris received and the 36.1% Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell received in her reelection bid.
Gluesenkamp Perez received about 4,800 more votes in Lewis County in her reelection bid than in 2022.
