Democratic incumbent Gov. Chris Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi easily clinched spots for the November ballot Tuesday, clearing the first hurdle in their bitter rematch for the governor's mansion.
Voters in Wyoming also chose House and Senate nominees, including those who will fight to serve the remaining term of Sen. Craig Thomas, who died of leukemia last summer.
The Washington state primary was the first head-to-head matchup for Gregoire and Rossi since the 2004 election, in which Gregoire won after three ballot counts and an unsuccessful Republican court challenge. Only 133 votes separated the two.
Gregoire and Rossi never faced serious challengers as the top two candidates this time. But the primary still posed something of a challenge for Gregoire, who needed a fairly clear first-place finish to soothe any doubts about her prospects for re-election. Votes will continue to be counted in the coming days as late mail-in ballots are tabulated.
The state's new primary system forces all candidates onto a single ballot. The top two vote-getters then face off in November regardless of party.
With about 36 percent of the expected ballots counted in Tuesday's primary, Gregoire had 48 percent of the vote and Rossi had 46 percent.
Neither campaign was publicly putting much weight in the primary results. But in an e-mail to supporters, Rossi said that if Gregoire fails to win the primary by a "commanding" margin, "it will be the beginning of the end of her campaign."
With both winning, the candidates immediately began making their cases to voters.
"I feel momentum is definitely with the Democrats moving to November with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket," Gregoire said.
For his part, Rossi said his message of change would resonate. "The bottom line is this is going to be a sprint to the end," he said.
For nearly 70 years, Washington state used a "blanket" primary system in which voters chose their favorites from any party, and the top Democratic, Republican and third-party vote-getters advanced to the general election.
But that system was struck down by a federal appeals court in 2003, three years after the Supreme Court invalidated a similar system in California because it infringed on the rights of parties to pick their nominees.
The "top two" primary system was passed by initiative in 2004. It is a winnowing process rather than a nominating election â€" raising the possibility that two candidates of the same party could be forced to compete in the general election. The Supreme Court upheld the system earlier this year.
In Wyoming, primary voters chose nominees for two Republican-dominated Senate seats and for the state's soon-to-be vacant House seat.
The incumbent Republican senators â€" Mike Enzi and John Barrasso â€" were unopposed in the GOP primary. Both have raised nearly $2 million, considerably more than their potential Democratic rivals.
Barrasso, a doctor and former state legislator, was appointed to the Senate after Thomas' death in June 2007. Enzi is an accountant and former mayor of Gillette, Wyo.
In the race to challenge Barrasso, Democrats were split between two candidates â€" defense attorney Nick Carter and Casper city councilman Keith Goodenough. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Carter had 51 percent of the vote to Goodenough's 49 percent. The difference was 353 votes out of 24,193 cast.
Carter and Goodenough both said they were waiting for an official vote count. The winner in the general election will fill the remaining four years of Thomas' term.
Enzi will be challenged in November by Democrat Chris Rothfuss, an instructor at the University of Wyoming, who beat Al Hamburg, a retired house painter.
Wyoming has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than 30 years, so whoever emerges from the Democratic primaries will face an uphill battle in November.
Wyoming voters also gave former State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis the nod in a four-person Republican primary for Wyoming's lone seat in the U.S. House.
"The effort around the state has been magnificent. There have been people who've set up lemonade stands at Little League games supporting Lummis for Congress," Lummis said from a bar in Casper, where she and her supporters were following the election results.