What’s your strategy for the presidential primary? Timing key to making vote count

Washington state’s move by both major political parties to use the results of the state’s March 10 presidential primary to allocate all of their pledged delegates could play a major role in the Democratic race, experts say.

Until this year, the Democrats held caucuses and allotted delegates based on those results. Voters would gather in precincts and try for hours to persuade their neighbors to support their candidates.

This time around, people will be able to quickly mark ballots in the privacy of their homes.

“Caucuses pull out the fervent people,” said Mark Stephan, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus. “If you have a primary, you get more young voters, and lower-income voters because they can do it from home versus having to figure out baby-sitting their kid and getting their way over to the caucus site.”

That could mean that different candidates will benefit from the primary.

Four year ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders won Washington’s Democratic caucuses. Two months later, Sen. Hillary Clinton won the party’s primary, but didn’t get any delegates because the party had decided to use only the caucus results.

Sanders’ passionate base gives him an advantage in caucuses, but that doesn’t mean he can’t win this year’s Democratic primary, Stephan said.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg “can use his money more effectively” in a primary than caucuses, said Stephan. The reason is the outcome of a primary is more influenced by TV, radio and online campaign ads than mobilizing die-hard supporters to caucuses, he added.

A Crosscut/Elway poll released Feb. 26 said 22 percent of people planning to vote in the Democratic presidential primary were undecided, with 21 percent for Sen. Sanders, 15 percent for Bloomberg, 11 percent for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 11 percent for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 10 percent for former Vice President Joe Biden, and 9 percent for former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The poll was conducted Feb. 15-18 and has a 5 percent margin of error.

There are 13 Democratic candidates on Washington’s March 10 primary ballot, including six who have dropped out of the race. If a voter, for example, chooses billionaire Tom Steyer -- who dropped out of the race Saturday after the South Carolina primary -- that vote still will count.

President Donald Trump is the sole GOP candidate on the ballot.

In addition to both major political parties for the first time using a primary to award all pledged delegates, Washington has moved up when it votes from May 24 in 2016 to March 10 this year.

That’s one week after 14 states including California will take part in “Super Tuesday,” when more than a third of all delegates to the Democratic National Convention are allotted.

“Both of those things are going to increase the relevance of Washington,” said Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham. “It makes it more likely that candidates will be active in campaigning here than maybe in years past. There will still be candidates in the contest when we get to vote.”

Ballots already have arrived at homes throughout Washington state, so voters not only have to decide who to vote for, but when to vote.

“Do you vote now or do you wait and see what happens” on Super Tuesday? Donovan asked.

Another big question is how many ballots won’t be counted because people don’t declare a political party.

Unlike in most elections, voters must sign a party declaration on the outside return envelope. During processing, these envelopes are manually sorted by the party marked on the outside of the envelope. This declaration must be the same party as the candidate voted on the ballot. If the oath is altered, or the ballot inside doesn’t match it, the vote won’t count, Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall wrote in an op-ed column Feb. 20.

“In a state without party registration, where people are kind of resistant to the idea of declaring a party preference, I bet there’s going to be a lot of people who send that ballot in and they won’t be counted because they won’t have marked that box. But it’s a gold mine for the [political] parties. They desperately want that data,” Donovan said.

Donovan also is tracking how the use of a presidential primary and an earlier primary will affect national media coverage of Washington. The other states holding a primary on March 10 are Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho. North Dakota is holding a Democratic caucus. Hawaii has a Republican caucus.

“We’ve always been kind of ignored by the national media because we go late or we have a caucus on a Saturday and it barely registers,” Donovan said. “Being the next Tuesday after Super Tuesday, it will be interesting to see if the results here are finally noticed.

“If Bloomberg upsets Sanders in one state on the 10th and it’s out here, will anybody notice? We’re so late in the news cycle and the results will take days to finalize” because of the vote-by-mail process, he said.

Tina Podlodowski, chair of Washington’s Democratic Party, said the presidential primary will give more people a voice in which candidate gets the most delegates.

Washington has 89 pledged delegates that will be allocated proportionally to Democratic candidates who receive at least 15 percent of the primary vote. Trump will pick up 44 Republican delegates from the primary.

“When you’re in a caucus, it’s very dependent upon location and time, even if there are some early voting options around it,” said Podlodowski. “With the primary, we have our 21-day voting period and people can get their voice out there in a significant sort of way and do so in the comfort of their own home or wherever it is they are going to vote.

“They want to vote and express themselves but they don’t necessarily want to go to a place where they are uncomfortable with all of the political posturing and people saying, ‘no, don’t vote for that person, vote for this person,’ “ she added..

The state Democratic Party is neutral in the presidential primary. Podlodowski said after “Super Tuesday,” she anticipates that there still will be from four to six candidates in the hunt for the nomination.

“That makes the need to gather as many delegates as possible to get to that magic number for the Democratic nomination of 1,991 incredibly important. The two most-delegate rich states are Washington state and Michigan. So it makes sense for candidates to be here, spending their time, rallying the troops,” she said.

Alex Hays, a Republican political consultant based in Tacoma, said there are “good government reasons” for a state to want to be relevant in the presidential nomination races.

“We’re one of the few states with a trade surplus. We’re an agricultural state. We’re an industrial state. We’re a tech state. There are a lot of things that I think in our state will get better and be made better nationally if more people paid attention to us,” he said.

This story was originally published March 1, 2020 at 5:45 AM.