Did Pierce County Democrats bungle last week’s ranked choice voting election? That’s the question some are asking even as the ballots are still being counted.

In two key races – county executive and county council District 2 – Democratic candidates collectively are winning majorities of the vote. But individually they trail Republican candidates in the number of first-choice votes received in ballots counted through Monday.

In the executive’s race, Democrats Pat McCarthy and Calvin Goings together have collected 133,951 votes, compared to Republican Shawn Bunney’s 95,320 votes. However, McCarthy (71,362 votes) trails Bunney, followed by Goings (62,589) and independent Mike Lonergan (41,208).

In the District 2 council race, Democrats Al Rose and Carolyn Merrival together have 17,813 first-choice votes, compared to 17,762 for Republican Joyce McDonald. But Rose trails McDonald by a substantial margin, with Merrival a distant third.

Which leads some to wonder whether splitting the Democratic vote was a smart idea. The party decided earlier this year to allow multiple candidates to run under the Democratic banner.

By contrast, Republicans narrowly rejected Lonergan’s request to carry their party label. That forced him to run under his own Executive Excellence banner. Lonergan said on election night that he suffered for not having a major party label. Presumably, Bunney benefited from that decision.

In an e-mail to supporters Sunday, Goings questioned the wisdom of allowing multiple candidates to run as Democrats. He noted the result could be a Republican executive and a Republican supermajority on the county council.

“These races are not at risk because Republicans received more total votes, quite the opposite,” Goings wrote. “These seats are in jeopardy because multiple Democrats ran for each position. Soon, county Democrats will need to do some real soul searching on how we run and win in a ranked choice voting environment. Clearly the Republicans have already thought this through.”

You can read Goings’ full e-mail below.

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Pierce County election results released late Monday show Republican Shawn Bunney continues to widen his lead in first-choice votes over Democrat Pat McCarthy.

The results show Bunney now has 35.2 percent of first-place votes, up from 34.8 percent in results released Saturday. McCarthy had 26.4 percent of votes Monday, down from 26.8 percent Saturday. Democrat Calvin Goings (23.1 percent) and independent Mike Lonergan (15.2 percent) continued to trail Monday.

It seems unlikely Bunney will get more than 50 percent of first choice votes. So under Pierce County’s new ranked choice voting system, some voters’ second and third choices will be taken into account.

McCarthy led Bunney when all those choices were calculated on Friday. However, elections officials won’t rerun those calculations again until this coming Friday.

In other election returns:

• Barbara Gelman (19.15 percent) now trails Jan Shabro (19.24 percent) for second place in the assessor-treasurer’s race. Dale Washam (24.95 percent) continues to have the most first-choice votes in this six-person nonpartisan race. Gelman leads fourth-place Terry Lee – who didn’t raise or spend a dime on his campaign – by just eight votes.

• Republican Joyce McDonald is tantalizingly close to winning the District 2 county council race outright. She has 49.9 percent of first-place votes. Democrat Al Rose has 30.0 percent of first-place votes, while Democrat Carolyn Merrival has 19.1 percent.

• Tacoma’s Proposition 1, which would repeal term limits for city council members, is failing, 52 percent to 48 percent.

There are still about 30,000 votes left to count in Pierce County. The next update: Wednesday at 6 p.m.