Washington did not “turn bluer” in this month’s general election, despite faulty reports from the mainstream media, according to a post by the Washington state GOP.

“In fact, by standard political metrics, Evergreen State voters turned slightly more toward Republican candidates in 2024,” according to their news release. “This continues an incremental move toward the political middle that’s been in place for several years.”

The state GOP said in the early hours after the November 5th election, many mainstream media outlets promoted the “hasty — and false” — narrative that Washington had bucked the national trend of more conservative voting. This false narrative was based on looking at the state’s votes in the presidential election, according to the state GOP. Early returns in that race suggested that Donald Trump was getting a slightly smaller percentage of votes cast than he had in the 2020 election.

“People who know Washington state politics know not to read major conclusions in preliminary results,” said Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP) Chairman and Aberdeen state Rep. Jim Walsh. “Our 100% mail-in voting system is slow. We wait days, even weeks, before we know for certain what the final results will be. So was the case this time, as media outlets jumped to wrong conclusions. This is just one reason the WAGOP would like to see a return to in-person, same-day voting. We’d be less prone to early media reports that turn out to be false.”

When more complete results were available, it became clear that Donald Trump gained ground in Washington slightly from 2020 to 2024, the GOP claims, adding his gain wasn’t huge — about a 1% increase in his percentage of votes received. The Cook Political Report was one of the first media platforms to report what was actually happening in Washington.

“We knew Trump was going to do slightly better this year than he did in 2020,” said Walsh. “We knew this from the conversations our field staff was having with people during door-knocking. We knew it from our campaign events and our internal polling. The ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was not as pervasive this year as it was before. And, most importantly, we’re seeing an incremental increase in Republican vote shares in all Washington races. So, the better presidential result was in line with that trend.”

Republican results at all levels did better in 2024 than in 2020 and earlier election cycles.

Among Washington’s nine statewide executive races, Republican candidates increased their average performance by about 4% points, with the median performance at about 45%. In competitive congressional races, Republicans increased their median performance to about 47%. State legislative races in “swing” districts showed similar improvements.

“We still need to do better,” said Walsh. “We are still challenged in those statewide executive position races. But we’re getting more competitive overall. If Washington Republicans stay on this track, at the rate we’re going, we’ll be much more competitive in a few years.”

Walsh suggests that mainstream media outlets not rush to hasty conclusions about Washington elections.

“I’m sure it was tempting to write headlines or design graphics that showed our state turning ‘bluer’ while the rest of the country turned more conservative. But that’s not what happened. Washington turned just slightly ‘redder’ in the presidential election this year. And ‘redder’ still in other federal and state-level elections.”