Washington's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1892-2020

The state of Washington has taken part in all 33 U.S. presidential elections since 1892, voting for the nationwide winner in 23 elections, giving a success rate of seventy percent. Washington voted for the Republican Party's nominee in 14 elections, and the Democratic nominee in 18; while Washington did not have a strong party affiliation throughout most of its history, it has grown to be a solid blue state in the past few decades, voting for the Democratic nominee in all elections since 1988. The only election where Washington did not vote for a major party nominee was in the 1912 election, where it voted for former-President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as a third-party candidate for the Progressive Party. In the 2020 election, Washington proved to be a comfortable victory for the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, who won by an almost twenty percent margin in the popular vote.

Electoral votes

Washington's influence has steadily grown throughout U.S. election history, with its allocation of electoral votes gradually increasing from four votes in at the turn of the twentieth century, to twelve votes since 2012. This is largely due to Washington state's high population growth, which has consistently grown at a faster rate than the national average since the 1940s; Seattle, Washington's largest city, has consistently been the fastest growing city in the U.S. in the past decade, due to the booming tech industry and high standard of living. As of the 2020 election, no U.S. president or major party nominee was born in Washington, or resided there when taking office.

The "Hamilton Electors"

In the 2016 election, four of Washington's electors made headlines by not voting for Hillary Clinton, who was the statewide winner of the popular vote. Instead, three electors voted for Colin Powell, while one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle; respectively making them the first African-American Republican and Native American to receive electoral votes for president. This was part of the "Hamilton Electors" movement, which began shortly after the popular vote results were announced. Its aim it was to have 35 electors cast faithless ballots, reduce Donald Trump's electoral vote majority below 270, and bring the election before the House of Representatives. Ultimately, only seven electors cast faithless ballots (only two of which were for Trump), and the four faithless electors from Washington were fined one thousand dollars each. Following a series of subsequent legal challenges, in July 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states may oblige electors to vote for their pledged candidate in future elections, therefore giving all states the power to invalidate faithless ballots in future presidential elections.