Pierce County’s election turnout reached 49 percent of registered voters with more mail ballots expected Thursday.

Elections supervisor Mary Johnson-Hall said she is hopeful the turnout for Tuesday’s election will reach the 50-percent mark that she and auditor Julie Anderson predicted.

Even at 49 percent, Pierce County’s turnout – typically the worst among Washington counties – could exceed the statewide turnout for the first time in recent years. Secretary of State Sam Reed predicted a 47 percent statewide turnout.

Johnson-Hall said 203,624 ballots had been received through today out of 415,852 registered voters.

“I think it’s great,” Johnson-Hall said. …

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UPDATE: Pollster and professor Matt Barreto takes issue with my characterization that the spread between Rob McKenna and Jay Inslee is not statistically significant. I applied the margin of error – 3.2 percent – to both candidates’ results. That is, I add that number to Inslee’s result and subtract it from McKenna’s. That is the common practice to determine whether the difference between the two in the poll is significant.

But it is not the only way and Barreto maintains that I also need to look at the probability of the poll.

“The poll results reveal a 92.3 probability that …

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