Spin Control: Spokane voters sharply divided in presidential race again

It’s often true that in politics, as in baseball, statistics are for losers. But sometimes they are for winners, too.

The final tally of this year’s presidential election suggests Spokane County voters remain sharply divided, although the polarization may be shifting slightly rather than growing rapidly.

That’s the result of a computerized analysis of the precinct breakdowns of the last five presidential elections. Since 2008, when Democrat Barack Obama ran against Republican John McCain, the margin between the candidate who won and the candidate who lost has grown, although not consistently with each cycle.

In all those elections, Spokane County went solidly for the Republican candidate. That’s no surprise, considering that since 1964 – when Lyndon Johnson easily defeated Barry Goldwater locally as well as nationally – Spokane County voters have only favored a Democrat in years with a strong third-party candidate who siphoned off votes that might logically have gone to the Republican.

In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton finished about 10,000 votes ahead of George H.W. Bush locally, but Ross Perot picked up about 38,000 votes. Four years later Clinton finished about 5,000 ahead of Republican Bob Dole, with Perot picking up 16,000. George W. Bush began the current local streak for GOP presidential candidates in 2000.

In 2008, however, McCain bested Obama locally by only about 2,500 votes out of some 220,000 cast in Spokane County, and there was no third-party or independent candidate on the ballot with a significant total.

A computer analysis of the precinct results in 2008 shows that Obama and McCain got roughly the same percentage of their votes from close precincts – that is, where the margin was fewer than 50 votes between the two candidates – as they did from winning precincts by 350 or more votes. Precincts with close margins, or “toss-ups,” accounted for about 2% of the total vote as did those with the mega-margins of 350 votes or more.

Most of the votes came from the other precincts, with margins above 50 votes but below 350 votes. In subsequent elections, Republican-leaning precincts sometimes got redder and Democratic-leaning precincts bluer, although the deepness of the shades shifted from cycle to cycle.

In 2012, when Obama ran against Republican Mitt Romney, the toss-up precincts gave the candidates only about 1.5% of the total vote; the mega-margin precincts provided candidates about more than twice that, or about 3.6% of the totals.

The amount of votes the presidential candidates get from mega-margin precincts in Spokane County increased again 2016. Trump finished nearly 19,700 votes ahead of Hillary Clinton that year – his largest margin in three races – partly helped by getting 3% of his total from mega-margin precincts compared to the 1.9% of her total from such precincts. The total vote in the toss-up precincts was just over 1% for both candidates combined.

Trump’s margin in 2020 slipped to about 12,800 votes over Joe Biden in Spokane County. He got 5.6% of his total from mega-margin precincts, while Biden got 3% of his total from such large wins. Precincts where the margins were within 50 votes were less than 1.5% of the total 2020.

This year, Trump’s margin was up to about 14,000 votes and the pattern shifted, at least for the Democratic candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris got 4% of her votes from toss-up precincts, while Trump got slightly less than 1% of his votes from those close races. He got about 2.5% of his votes from mega-margin precincts while she got 2.3% of her votes from such big wins.

So does that mean we are more polarized than ever before, and living in red or blue “silos”?

Not necessarily. There were more toss-up precincts this year than in any of those previous elections. That’s partly a result of the number of precincts in the county growing to adjust for increased population and voter registration, as well as shifting lines from annexations.

It’s also a sign of more precincts where support for – or perhaps opposition to – the two major candidates is relatively equal. More precincts are being won by single digits, and some of those precincts change from light blue to light red, or vice versa, between elections.

The percentage of tossup precincts has varied from one presidential election to the next, although it’s usually between one in four or five of the county’s total.

The number of mega-margin precincts has also varied since the 2008 election, with highs of 11% in 2008 and 2016, and a low of 5.8% this year. But during that time, the biggest margins have increased from an upper limit of about 450 votes to as many as 600 votes for the winner.

For Republicans, the most consistent mega-margin precincts are in rural areas on the western edge of the county, in the north in and around Deer Park, in the southeast in and around Rockford and in and around Liberty Lake or just outside Spokane Valley city limits. The most consistent mega-margin precincts for Democrats have been in the city of Spokane from I-90 south, Browne’s Addition, downtown and some city precincts just north of the river.

But even in the darkest red or deepest blue mega-margin precincts, there are none in which the losing candidate got fewer than 100 votes. To borrow a sports term, there are blowouts, but no shutouts in local presidential elections.