State initiatives drive midterm turnout as analysts predict late voter surge

We are at a crucial point in time when your votes will shape both policy and cultural issues here in Washington. To break down all the key races and initiatives that are dominating the conversation, we have our FOX 13 political analyst, Democrat Sandeep Kaushik over here, and Republican Randy Pepple. All right, guys, let's get right to it. What is the voter turnout looking to be both here locally and nationally? Well, I mean, the voter turnout nationally is very much favoring the Democrats. Locally, because we don't register by party, all you can do is note how many returns are. The returns are higher than you would expect in the midterm. And the enthusiasm, unfortunately, from my party is all on the Democrat side. So early voting has been dominated by Democrats. I'm hearing the same thing. I was talking with someone this morning that was looking at who's turned out so far. Strong Democrats are turning out. At a higher rate than we've seen in the last midterms, strong Republicans are about 7% less, strong Democrats about 8% more. So you're seeing the enthusiasm gap that Randy's talking about. So as you're alluding to, the numbers right now are shaping up to be higher than the last midterms, Brandi? Yes, it appears, I mean, I heard from two or three states as I was driving in that Their turnout is already higher before their polls have closed than it was in the last midterm. Yeah. And in Washington State, our early returns are running ahead of the last midterm amount as well. And we can't match them to party here, but- More turnout is not going to be good for Republicans. Though I would say turnout here right now in Washington that we've seen so far, maybe a little bit ahead, but it's not way ahead. In some of these states that have hot Senate races around the country, those are the places where you're seeing a huge surge in turnout over what a typical midterm is. Here it's a little bit ahead of where it normally is, but not radically so. So we know many Washingtonians, of course, are motivated to vote, I'm assuming because of the three initiatives and a lot of big conversation there going on with those initiatives. And I've seen a bunch of campaign ads, right, in the last couple of days. And I'm thinking over here, okay, who do they think that they can sway with that in the last 48 hours? Are there actually people who are sitting there undecided on those three initiatives? The reality is, is that most of us are not weird. Political junkies, like myself, don't want to cast any aspersions. But most people don't think about this stuff. They're thinking about their kid's Halloween costume and the PTA conference this week. And they get the ballot and they want to vote. But that's why you have the drop off from a presidential to a midterm is because if there's not a presidential driving that discussion, people don't turn out. But this year, given the debate over the initiatives, that will help Republicans turn out who otherwise wouldn't be turning out over their candidates based on the early stuff we're seeing. All right, well, we've seen some steady lines at the ballot boxes here today. Sandeep, yesterday on Seattle News Tonight, you were confident that no side would win when it comes to I-645, which is the initiative to keep the millionaires taxed. Do you still feel that way? I do, though, again, I don't want to prejudge the voters here, you know, or jinx myself on this one. I am working on that campaign, right? And so I do think everything we've seen so far says that no will prevail, but we'll see. Yeah, and I just want some inside information, since you are paid by that campaign and you're working actively, what has your strategy been the last 24 hours? Well, we've been continuing to just kinda execute and try to get people to turn out and vote, people on our side, and continuing to keep getting the message out there that That, um... Because there are a lot of late deciders, right? You would think most people have decided by now, and most people have. But there's still a contingent, not insignificant contingent of people that fill out their ballot on that last day and they go to that drop box. So you just keep pushing till that final hour to try to get the word out, get out there on social media and say- You know, vote no on 645. So we're just driving home a business right out of Washington State. No. That would be my perspective. But the fact is, the no campaign has a strong base strategy of turning out Democrat voters. And they're getting help in many other campaigns as well, because that will allow them to prevail. If you have enough Republican voters The independents then become the deciding factor, and right now the independents have been leaning towards, well, we're not against it yet, but it's that last 5, 8% that will actually decide today what they're going to do because they didn't know what color socks they were putting on this morning. Good morning. They will decide a couple of these elections. Yeah, I will say this, you know, and I don't know, Randy may disagree with me on this, but in midterm elections like this one, ballot measure campaigns like the ones we have on the ballot this year typically don't. They don't drive that much turnout. They don't change the kind of baseline. These elections are really about, they've really become nationalized, they're really about in this case, a referendum on President Trump, right? And that's what the big motivator is on the Democratic side to come out and vote. It may be a kind of a drag on the Republican side right now. That dynamic is probably more important than anything the initiatives themselves do in terms of pulling people. Yeah, so we're gonna be back, obviously we're gonna have three hours of live coverage. Randy and Sandeep, you guys will back here with us to kind of break down all the big news. There's a lot to unpack for sure. Yeah, that's tonight from 8 to 11 o'clock. We'll get the first numbers about 8.15 and then we'll turn to you guys and see what you think about those. So thanks for being here. We appreciate it.