During the recent cold, dark days, I decided to take a deep dive into the last election here on the Rock, something I have done a time or two before when unable to go outdoors. By deep dive, I mean looking beyond the countywide vote totals and examining how we voted in our neighborhoods.

There are 285 precincts on Whidbey Island, ranging in size from a few dozen voters to a thousand or more. I took a particularly close look at how our three incorporated towns voted: Oak Harbor, Coupeville and Langley. And I focussed on two interesting races: president and state senator.

Let’s start with the Island County totals: for president, Democrat Kamala Harris got 57% and Republican Donald Trump got 41%. For state senator, Democrat Janet St. Clair got 52.6% and Republican Ron Muzzall got 47.4%. (Despite that shortfall, Muzzall was reelected our state senator; more about how that happened later.)

What strikes me as interesting in those latest results is that, until about 30 years ago, Island County and Whidbey Island were almost always Republican territory. All three county commissioners, the two state representatives, the state senator and even the congressional representative were usually Republicans. But as the West Coast turned reliably Democratic beginning in the 1990s, so did our Rock.

These days, I tell people that if you want to understand politics on Whidbey look at a map of the island and imagine it as a thermometer. The south end is deep blue, the central part is pale blue turning pink as you drive up and the north is red turning every brighter red the farther north you go. Much of this is because of population growth and who has moved in where. Whidbey’s population has grown by almost 13% to about 70,000 since 2010. The central and south has attracted an older, wealthier, more liberal crowd. The north, thanks to the military, has attracted a younger, more conservative crowd.

So how did our three Rock cities vote for president and state senator, based on precinct totals within their town boundaries? Let’s start with Oak Harbor. I was surprised to learn that Harris won by 200 votes over Trump, 3,869 to 3,669. When I did the same precinct totals back in 2016, Trump clobbered Hillary Clinton by several thousand votes. But I also noticed that in 2024 about 2,000 fewer Oak Harbor residents cast a ballot for president than they did for state senator. Could it be that some folks just didn’t like either choice and so just skipped that race?

In Coupeville, Harris won in a landslide, almost 1,500 votes to 652 for Trump. And in one big precinct, Harris won by 461 to 167. Not a surprise, I suppose, given the town’s growth in recent years.

And in Langley, the landslide was enormous: Harris won 1,025 votes while Trump got just 163. And in Langley’s biggest precinct, Harris got 827 votes to Trump’s 103.

In the unincorporated areas, the vote was pretty much like the Whidbey thermometer: mostly blue in the central areas, growing redder north of Oak Harbor to Deception Pass.

So now let’s examine those state senator results in the three cities and figure out how Ron Muzzall, born and raised on Whidbey and whose family has owned a farm here for 100 years, was reelected after losing Island County.

In Oak Harbor, Muzzall easily beat St. Clair, 5,271 votes to 4,330. As I mentioned, notice how many more folks voted in the senate race than in the presidential race. In one big Oak Harbor precinct, Muzzall got 562 votes to St. Clair’s 432.

In Coupeville, St. Clair easily won with more than 1,400 votes to 946 for Muzzall. And in one precinct, she got 415 votes to his 211.

In Langley, the result was even bigger. St. Clair got 1,636 votes to Muzzall’s 474, and in one precinct, she got a whopping 802 votes to his 133.

In the unincorporated areas, St. Clair easily won everything south of Oak Harbor while Muzzall only won narrowly north of Oak Harbor.

But how, you ask, was Ron Muzzall reelected if he lost Island County? The 10th Legislative District, which he represents, consists of all of Island County, a big chunk of Skagit County and a relatively tiny sliver of north Snohomish County. Like Island, Skagit areas in the 10th District also went for St. Clair. But the sliver of Snohomish, which has long been reliably Republican territory, went for Muzzall by almost eight to one — more than making up his deficit in the other two counties and handing him his reelection. Fascinating, isn’t it?

So that’s how I spent my cold, dark winter days recently. It left me feeling very comforted that democracy still works here.

Harry Anderson is a retired journalist who worked for the Los Angeles Times and now lives on Central Whidbey.