How we voted 2012

Madison Park: reliably blue and socially liberal

The 3,000 or so Madison Park residents who voted in the recent General Election overwhelmingly supported the major winning statewide ballot issues and all of the major candidates who won their races in Washington, including the President. Our analysis of the recently released vote totals for the Madison Park precincts showed that the neighborhood's voters were far more Democratic and intensely liberal than the voters of the State as a whole. This outcome is typical of Madison Park's voting pattern in past elections.

Like the rest of the State, Madison Parkers were solidly behind the Obama/Biden ticket, delivering two thirds of their votes to the Democrats.  This is well in excess of the landslide 56% vote total the President received statewide:

The same pattern held true for the Gubernatorial election, where Democrat Jay Inslee bested  Republican Rob McKenna here by a 54% to 46% margin, while carrying the state by only 4%:

The other major race, the contest for Attorney General between Democrat Bob Ferguson and Republican Reagan Dunn, also showed an outsized Democratic vote, with Ferguson winning 60% of Madison Parkers while carrying only 53% of the statewide vote.

It's perhaps surprising how strongly voters here supported the three major ballot initiatives that also won statewide.  Referendum 1240, which approved Charter Schools in Washington, barely won passage by the State's voters but carried Madison Park with a stunning 80% vote.

Madison Parkers were also heavily in favor of Gay Marriage, which also achieved an 80% approval level here while carrying the State with only a 4% margin:

The third controversial ballot measure, Initiative 502, which legalized marijuana, passed strongly at the State level but was an overwhelming favorite here:

Madison Park is comprised of nine voting precincts, including three in Washington Park. These precincts voted in lockstep*, with exception only of one outlier, SEA 43-1992:

That would be Broadmoor.

Broadmoor reverts to Republicanism

In the 2008 Presidential election, even Seattle's one remaining dependable Republican precinct, the gated community of Broadmoor, voted with the State's majority and gave 53% of its vote to Barack Obama. That apostasy may have been a first for Broadmoor, at least in the modern era.

This time around, however, Broadmoor was once again a tiny spec of Republican red awash in a sea of Democratic blue.  While Seattle and Madison Park voted overwhelmingly Democratic, Broadmoor voted not only for Republican Mitt Romney as President (56% to 44%) but for Rob McKenna as Governor (71% to 29%) and for Reagan Dunn as Attorney General (65% to 35%).

Broadmoor, however, did not prove to be a socially conservative precinct, whatever its generally Republican views.  It supported gay marriage with a 71% to 29% vote and gave the nod to marijuana legalization by a landslide 61% to 39%.

[*Although the non-Broadmoor precincts all came down on the same side of the major issues and candidates, one Washington Park precinct (SEA 43-1819) almost voted for Rob McKenna for Governor, Jay Inslee winning the precinct by a vote of only 198 to 194.]

As we always note when reviewing voting results for Madison Park, there are two small sections of the neighborhood that are not included because those precincts primarily exist outside the Madison Park boundaries.  A block on 39th Avenue E. just north of Denny Blaine is located for some reason in a precinct within in the 46th Legislative District (the rest of Madison Park is in the 43rd), and the several blocks of Madison Park situated north of Madison Street and West of Broadmoor (near the Shell station) are part of a precinct (SEA 43-2020) that is composed primarily of blocks in Madison Valley.  This posting was corrected as a result of a reader comment below.