AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Washington state's primary

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington state will hold a primary Tuesday for U.S. House and other offices as firefighters battle wildfires that have devastated the state's second-largest city, Spokane, and forced local officials to operate under a state of emergency.

Elections officials have advised voters in the affected areas to use a state website to verify whether the ballots they have cast have been received and how to obtain a replacement ballot if necessary. Voters have until 8 p.m. local time to have their ballots hand-postmarked at a U.S. Post Office or returned to a ballot drop box. One drop box in the evacuation zone will be closed once any remaining ballots are collected, according to a Spokane County advisory.

Roughly 67,000 people in the Spokane area are under evacuation orders. The state conducts elections almost entirely by mail with relatively little in-person voting.

A key U.S. House battleground this fall will be in the state's 3rd Congressional District in southwest Washington, bordering Oregon to the south and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is running for a third term in the seat she first won narrowly in 2022. She faces eight primary challengers, including Republican state Senate Minority Leader John Braun, who has a key endorsement from President Donald Trump.

Washington state has a top-two primary system in which all candidates compete on the same ballot and the two highest vote-getters regardless of party advance to the general election.

Trump received 50.3% of the vote from 3rd District voters in 2024, while Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris received 47%. Gluesenkamp Perez received 50.1% and 52% of the vote in the 2022 and 2024 general elections, respectively.

Incumbents are running for reelection in nine of the state’s 10 congressional districts. The exception is the 4th Congressional District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse is retiring after six terms. Newhouse was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

Eleven candidates are running to replace him, including Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney and entrepreneur and former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler, both Republicans. Trump endorsed McKinney in January on the five-year anniversary of the insurrection. He previously endorsed Sessler’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Newhouse in 2024. Trump received 59% of the 4th District vote in the presidential election that year.

About half of Washington’s 49 state Senate seats and all 98 state House seats are up in 2026. Democrats currently control about 60% of seats in each chamber.

Three of Washington’s nine state Supreme Court justices are on Tuesday’s ballot, including Chief Justice Debra Stephens. A fourth seat is open. Although state Supreme Court seats are nonpartisan, liberals hold a majority and the ideological balance of the court is not at stake.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

In-person voting centers close at 8 p.m. PT, which is 11 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. House, state Senate, state House and state Supreme Court.

Any eligible voter may participate in the state’s top-two primary system.

As of July 1, there were about 5.1 million registered voters in Washington.

About 2 million votes were cast in the 2024 all-party primary for governor. That was slightly higher than the roughly 1.9 million votes cast in the 2022 all-party U.S. Senate primary.

Washington conducts its elections almost entirely by mail, and very few voters cast their votes in person. In the 2024 state primary, about 58.5% of voters delivered their ballots to a drop box, while about 41.3% sent their ballots through the mail.

As of Friday, about 780,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

The first vote updates of the night tend to include mostly results from mail voting with relatively few results from early in-person or in-person Election Day voting. A handful of counties, including two of the more populous in the state, Spokane and Clark, often release the bulk of their absentee results in their first vote update, but most counties roll them out over the course of the night.

In the 2024 state primary, the AP first reported results at 11:06 p.m. ET, or six minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 11:43 p.m. ET, with about 51% of total votes counted. The vote count surpassed the 75% mark on the Thursday following the election at 7:56 p.m. ET and reached about 95% of the total vote six days after the election at 7:24 p.m. ET.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Machine recounts in Washington state are automatic if the vote margin between the top two candidates is less than 2,000 votes and less than 0.5% of the total votes cast for both candidates. Manual recounts are required for statewide contests if the margin is less than 1,000 votes and less than 0.25% of the total votes cast for both candidates. For all other races, manual recounts are required when the margin is less than 150 votes and less than 0.25% of the total votes cast for both candidates. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of Tuesday, there will be 91 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.