With presidential race fever in full swing, Washington voters will be casting their vote for their respective parties’ nominees today in the state primary election.

The state Democratic and Republican parties are both facilitating primaries, although the Washington Democratic party already selected Barack Obama as its nominee through the state caucuses on Feb. 9.

“The caucus is more important than the primary for Democrats,” said junior Max Wagner, president of the Young Democrats (YD) on campus. “I think a lot of the younger people in the club were moved by Obama’s message of hope and change. We think that a lot of the positions between Hillary and Obama are similar, but Obama tended to be more progressive than Hillary. A lot of it was his personality.”

Although the Democratic primary may be a formality, Republicans look to the primary election to determine nearly half of their delegated nominee votes. John McCain won most of the 21 caucus votes in Washington state, and is poised to win the remaining 19 in tomorrow’s election.

“We’re going through the process of uniting behind John McCain,” said senior Tom Walker, president of the College Republicans (CR) on campus. “You have George W. Bush endorsing John McCain, which is a push to get Mike Huckabee to finally drop out of the race. To say that the Republican Party is united right now, though, is not quite true.”

With Mitt Romney’s endorsement of McCain last week, only three candidates remain in the bid for the Republican ticket: McCain, Huckabee and underdog Ron Paul.

Absentee ballots for the Washington primary election must be postmarked by today.

[Reach reporter Jeff Tripoli at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]