 Today the Puget Sound region firmly has power over the entirety of the State of Washington.  And as in the first conflict, it wishes to retain its power.  The borders which we see today in Washington were not made with Eastern Washington in mind, indeed they were made for giving the Puget Sound region a maximum of power over what would become Washington State.  Across the United States we see a similar problem develop in the early 19th Century in the State of Massachusetts and what would become the State of Maine.
 Maine’s drive to statehood mirrors conditions which exist in Washington today.  Massachusetts and what is now Maine were geographically separated from each other, much like the two sections of Washington.  Indeed, the boundaries of Maine “served to remind those in Maine …that the union of Maine and Massachusetts was not only an unwilling but an unnatural one.”  Also like Eastern Washington, the climate of Maine was much more extreme than that of Massachusetts.  The case of Maine becoming a State could be an avenue for Eastern Washington to take in a quest for statehood.  Maine also had many unsuccessful drives to independence from Massachusetts, much like the past and contemporary movements in Eastern Washington.  There have been moves for Eastern Washington to cede from Washington and become both its own state and to join what was once part of the Washington territory, Idaho.  Over the 20th Century we see the demographics of the situation change.  
While Western Washington had a population explosion during the 20th Century, Eastern Washington grew at a more steady pace.  While the entire State of Washington had a population growth of around 20 percent per decade in the mid-20th Century most of this growth was limited to the Seattle Megalopolis, from the Kent River Valley in the south to Everett in the north.  We see the population of Eastern Washington dwindle from 35% of Washington’s total population to in the early 20th Century to only 21% nearing the end of the 20th Century. Even today, while Eastern Washington contains some large cities, only nine cities have a population of over 15,000 people.  Three-fifths of the population of Eastern Washington lives in one of these nine cities.  It is the amazing growth of Western Washington which has heightened the division of Eastern and Western Washington along with the natural and historical differences in the area.  Eastern Washington cannot help but succumb to the political whim of Western Washington, as the votes of the entirety of Eastern Washington are not enough to combat those of Western Washington.  Even The Seattle Times notes that just the voters in King County outnumber the 646,000 registered voters in Eastern Washington.
Recent events have intensified the divide between Eastern and Western Washington.  When a resolution passed by the Seattle City Council called for the breaching of Snake River Dams, despite Seattle being located nearly 200 miles from where the Snake River enters the Columbia near the Tri-Cities, tempers raged in Eastern Washington. 