It’s a rare election that doesn’t impart important lessons, and this year’s was no exception.
Some were things we should have known, but either forgot or ignored. Others were things we learned and should try hard not to forget, but probably will.
Although there are still thousands of votes to be counted around the state, here are some of the lessons of 2022:
- Elections are rarely about one thing. Political commentators usually pick one particular issue, concentrate on it for a week or two as the determining factor in an upcoming election, then move on to something else as if the first issue no longer exists.
Voters face multiple issues at the same time, navigate a path through them and try to pick a candidate who will help most or hurt least.
People outside of Washington always underestimate Patty Murray. After national pundits got tired of arguing whether the election would be about abortion or gas prices — as if people couldn’t be concerned about both — some started saying or writing in October that the state’s five-term senator might not get her sixth.
This was not just talking heads on Fox News and other conservative news sites who found Tiffany Smiley an engaging interview. George F. Will, in a column printed in this newspaper, opined nearly a month before the election that Washington could be in for “a Senate shocker.” He described Smiley’s compelling biography and quoted some polls that said the race was close.
Will, who is a student of history as well as an elegant wordsmith, apparently ignored Murray’s history of dispatching opponents who have been built up by the GOP. As of Monday, she was ahead of Smiley by nearly 400,000 votes or about 14 points.
- You can’t win if you don’t play. Democrats need to take a lesson from the old Washington Lottery commercials that used that slogan to boost ticket sales.
Of the 12 legislative positions on various Spokane County ballots, seven had a Republican incumbent facing no Democratic challenger. One other race was between two Republicans. One of the five new county commissioner positions was between two Republicans and another was between a Republican and an independent who goes by “Wild Bill.”
You might say that Spokane County trends Republican, so what’s the point? But the 3rd Legislative District is heavily Democratic but Republicans always manage candidates for those seats.
- Like football, elections can be a game of inches. Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for having the secretary of state position switch to the Democrats for the first time in 48 years.
Appointed incumbent Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, faced a serious challenge from Julie Anderson, an independent with good credentials for the job as Pierce County auditor.
Republican Brad Klippert, a Kennewick legislator who failed in his bid to oust U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse in Central Washington, then decided to run a write-in campaign for secretary of state. As of Friday, Anderson was about 51,000 votes behind Hobbs; the write-in total was more than 85,000.
By comparison, the write-in total in the only other statewide contested race, between Murray and Smiley, was about 4,700.
- Polls don’t predict elections. Television talking heads learn this every election and promptly forget it. They don’t foretell the future, they give you a snapshot view of public opinion at the time they are conducted.
Campaigns tend to use polls to test public sentiment on issues. They always ask the “if the election were held today, who would you vote for” question to track how the message is playing since the last time they polled.
Reporters should never accept at face value the results of a “how would you vote” question from a campaign without seeing the methodology and the rest of the poll.
Tsunami waves are rare in nature and even rarer in politics. Neither are predictable weeks or even days ahead of time, so political operatives and pundits should be banned from predicting them and only use the term after the results are in.
