The November 2025 general election just edged out 2021 for the bleak ranking of fourth-worst turnout in Washington State
Last week, elections officials in Washington’s thirty-nine counties certified the results in the November 2025 general election. With vote counting at an end, we now have the final turnout numbers for this year’s local elections cycle, and they’re not pretty. Statewide, turnout was a paltry 39.24%, which ranks as the fourth-worst general election turnout in state history, going back to when turnout records began to be kept.
The fourth place spot on the all time worst turnouts list had been occupied by the last comparable cycle, 2021, for the last two years, after 2023 set a record for the very worst, displacing 2017 and 2015, which now rank second and third.
2021 is now in the fifth place spot, while 2019, the only odd year cycle in the last ten years to get above forty percent, ranks tenth on the list.
Going back to 1973, we’ve now had twenty-seven statewide general elections in odd-numbered years, and only twelve of those have had majority turnout. And only one — the 1991 general election — has seen turnout above sixty percent.
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/12/the-november-2025-general-election-just-edged-out-2021-for-the-bleak-ranking-of-fourth-worst-turnout-in-washington-state-history.html