Washington Republican Straw Poll Results Coming; 3-Way Tie in Edmonds

Republicans from around Washington state met Saturday morning in precinct caucuses to elect local delegates and vote in a presidential straw poll, the results of which will be announced Saturday evening.

Edmonds Patch will update the straw poll in a story here as soon as the results are available, along with an account of the caucuses and comments from local participants.

Patch live-blogged from more than a dozen caucus sites Saturday morning, including from Edmonds' Snohomish County PUD office, where more than 90 people met in 27 precincts from the 32nd Legislative District to select delegates to the Snohomish County GOP convention and vote in the straw poll.

The convention will be held March 31 at Snohomish High School in Snohomish.

There was a three-way tie in the straw poll vote in Edmonds with 31 votes each for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich tallied 13 and there were six undecided.

Statewide, Mitt Romney was ahead in early results Saturday from straw poll voting at Washington Republican caucuses.

The early results are from the small counties, and the five most populous counties, including Snohomish, King and Pierce, have not finished reporting yet.

"These numbers could change," state Republican Party chairman Kirby Wilbur said.

In the smaller counties of the state, Romney captured 31.5 percent of the vote. Ron Paul took second with 26.9 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum took 24.4 percent and Newt Gingrich took 12.9 percent of the early results.

Santorum and Paul were both in Eastern Washington on Thursday, which may have helped his cause in the Eastern side of the state, Wilbur said.

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Bellevue Patch Editor Venice Buhain contributed to this report.