The general election is over; we all know who won or lost, and what was approved or rejected.
But how did the Plateau vote on Nov. 8, and how does it compare to how the counties and state voted?
The results may surprise you; while Buckley is staunchly in the red, some parts of Enumclaw showed preference to Democratic candidates over their challengers, and Black Diamond appears split down the middle as Ten Trails turns the city purple.
Please note that the precincts we examined were inside city limits of Enumclaw, Buckley, and Black Diamond, and not unincorporated county land. We examined unincorporated land and other small towns as a whole later in the article.
HOW DOES YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD VOTE?
Enumclaw
Despite some signs of blue, Enumclaw remains fairly red.
Democrats fared best in the race between Rep. Kim Schrier and challenger Matt Larkin overall, where Larkin nabbed 53% approval against in Enumclaw. Sen. Phil Fortunato earned a clear lead of 55% votes against opponent Chris Vance, and Tiffany Smiley, Sen. Patty Murray’s opponent, earned 56% of Enumclaw’s votes. Other Independent or Republican candidates fared similarly.
Most of Enumclaw’s voting precincts followed this pattern of supporting Republicans over Democrats (and sided against higher taxes), but one broke the mold: precinct 31-3246, located at the heart of downtown, supported Hobbs, Vance, Murray, and Schrier over their opponents, and also approved of Prop. 1.
Despite this precinct leaning more left than the others, though, Stanton and Wilbur couldn’t catch a break, as voters here still supported their Republican opponents.
Precincts 31-0417, 31-0411, and 31-0409 also supported Schrier, but did not to the same for Murray.
This map using Pierce County GIS data has been highlighted to make the precinct boundaries more visible. Precinct 31-854, which we called “West” Buckley, extends to nearly all of the city west of Highway 410. Precinct 31-855, “Central” Buckley, centers on the downtown area. Precinct 31-856, “Northeast” Buckley, includes the area east of the highway and north of Mason Ave and Collins Road. Finally, precinct 31-857, “Southeast” Buckley, includes most of the region south of Mason and Collins and east of South Division St.
Buckley
A clear majority of Buckley voters supported Smiley and Larkin, handing them 67% and 64% of the vote respectively. The vote totals were
The city saw a similar trend with 31st District Legislative candidates. Phil Fortunato won by 67% against Vance here. Stokesbary took 70% against Holly Stanton. And Eric Robertson won re-election with an average of 73% of the vote in Buckley against Carrie Wilbur.
Still, there was variation. The west and northeast sides of Buckley are a little more Democrat-leaning than the central and southeast sides. Republicans, on average, performed about 5% better in southeast Buckley than in west Buckley.
Chris Vance, for example, earned 35% of the vote on the west and northeast sides, but only 29% in the southeast and 31% in central Buckley. Other candidates saw similar differences.
Of Pierce County voters in the 31st Legislative District who were mailed a ballot, 65.5% returned their ballot, according to Pierce County Elections. (That includes voters in Bonney Lake, Sumner and Edgewood.) That’s better than the county-wide average of 61% – in fact, it’s the second-highest rate of all legislative districts in the county. (Only voters in the Gig Harbor / Kitsap Peninsula area had a higher turnout.)
Precinct map of Black Diamond.
Black Diamond
Unlike its neighbors to the south, which more-or-less sit solidly in the red, Black Diamond has some strong Democrat-leaning precincts, making the city more purple.
In fact, thanks to Ten Trails, the city actually leaned Democrat overall, 50.5% to 49.5%.
The two Democratic precincts, as mentioned, were the Ten Trails areas (05-3976 and 05-3849); Murray received 67% and Schrier 69% of the vote in the former, and 63% and 67% respectively in the latter.
All other Democrats or left-leaning candidates also won the majority of votes in these two areas.
Making up the city’s most Republican-leaning areas were the east side and around Jones Lake (05-0240 and 05-3310). In the former, Smiley received 60% of the votes, and Larkin 59%; the latter, Smiley received 59%, and Larkin 57%.
Lake Sawyer East was split down the middle, with Smiley and Schrier receiving 52% of the votes in their respective races.
Despite the city overall split between Republicans and Democrats, Prop. 1 was largely unsupported, only gaining about 36% approval.
The Courier-Herald calculated the political valence of our reader’s communities this year using a simple formula. We divided the voters for Tiffany Smiley over the total votes cast in the U.S. Senate race. (We didn’t include votes for write-in candidates.) Then we did the same thing for Matt Larkin in the U.S. Rep. race.
We averaged those two results, figuring that taken together, they give a rough estimate of how many voters in each precinct subscribe to mostly Republican or Democrat national political views overall. For instance, if a precinct votes 64% Republican, like Wilkeson, then we know it voted roughly 36% Democrat.
We decided that precincts that voted less than 5% right or left were “Moderate.” A district that was 5% to 10% in either direction “Leans Democrat / Republican.” Being 10% to 20% in either direction made a precinct simply Republican or Democrat. And a precinct that was more than 20% in either direction is “Strongly Republican / Democrat.”
These numbers apply only to national races, and conservative candidates for the state legislature did much better among local voters in than Smiley or Larkin did — meaning we may be undercounting how conservative our voters are. So it bears repeating: This is rough-and-dirty math, and we’re doing a lot of generalizing.
But the results are interesting because they allow us to compare these neighborhoods to each other with the same set of data. View the full data here. Here’s some factoids:
• The most Republican precincts of our readership were Carbonado and Burnett, which each voted 75.5% Republican in federal races, on average. Wilkeson Creek West (the area between Burnett and South Prairie) voted 74% Republican, and the neighborhood around Westwood Elementary voted 72% Republican. Those four are the only precincts in our area that were “Strong” Republican areas.
• The most Democrat precinct was centered around the White River Amphitheatre, the precinct that King County labels “Muckleshoot.” It went 87% Democrat, making it the only “Strong” Democrat precinct in our area. Ten Trails south voted 68% for Democrats on average, followed closely by Greenwater residents at 67.5% Democrat. And Ten Trails central went 65% Democrat. Those three are the only precincts that we classified as “Democrat.”
• If you live at East Lake Sawyer in Black Diamond, your neighborhood is the most moderate in the entire Plateau, with a perfect 50-50 split. The hundreds of voters who lived there favored Tiffany Smiley by 20 votes, but preferred to keep Kim Schrier by 14 votes.
• Black Diamond residents also showed the greatest political range of the three major cities. Folks living in Ten Trails were, on average, about 26 points more Democrat-leaning than their neighbors in east Black Diamond.
• Enumclaw is Moderate at 54.5% Republican; Black Diamond is Moderate at 50.5% Democrat; and Buckley is Republican at 65.5%. Unincorporated areas on average vote more Republican (63%) than incorporated towns and cities (only 55.5%).
• Averaging all of the locations we pulled from, the Plateau is 59% Republican, voting 60% for Tiffany Smiley and 58% for Matt Larkin.
• No matter which precinct you live in, at least a handful of your neighbors voted for someone different than you for our representatives in Congress. You can always get to know them and learn why they voted the way they did.
