Maria Cantwell well ahead of Rob McKenna in potential U.S. Senate matchup, NPI poll finds

The Ever­green State is like­ly to remain safe Demo­c­ra­t­ic ter­ri­to­ry in next year’s elec­tions for Unit­ed States Sen­ate, if the results of NPI’s lat­est statewide sur­vey of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are any indication.

As most read­ers prob­a­bly know, our state elects all of its exec­u­tive depart­ment posi­tions in pres­i­den­tial years, so in midterm years, if there’s a mar­quee race of statewide impor­tance, it’s a Unit­ed States Sen­ate contest.

But it does­n’t look like next year’s Sen­ate race will be very com­pet­i­tive. The Repub­li­cans haven’t found a chal­lenger for Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Maria Cantwell yet, but we fig­ured the strongest can­di­date they could pos­si­bly recruit would be for­mer State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na, the last Repub­li­can to run for either gov­er­nor or U.S. Sen­a­tor here who got more than 47% of the vote.

So we decid­ed to pit Cantwell and McKen­na against each oth­er in a hypo­thet­i­cal matchup. Here is the ques­tion we asked, and the answers:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate were held today and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Maria Cantwell and Repub­li­can Rob McKen­na, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Maria Cantwell: 53%
• Rob McKen­na: 40%
• Not sure: 6%

As we can see, Cantwell has a healthy thir­teen point lead. 53% of respon­dents said they would vote for her, while only 40% said they’d vote for McKenna.

It is worth not­ing that Cantwell’s lead here is just as strong, if not stronger, than ear­ly polls from the last cycle pit­ting her against Repub­li­can State Sen­a­tor Michael Baum­gart­ner, her even­tu­al 2012 oppo­nent. (Cantwell ulti­mate­ly crushed Baum­gart­ner in the Novem­ber 2012 gen­er­al elec­tion, 60.45% to 39.55%.)

A Sur­veyUSA poll tak­en from Novem­ber 21st-23rd, 2011 found Cantwell with 51% sup­port and Baum­gart­ner with 39%. In that same poll, for gov­er­nor, McKen­na received 44% sup­port and Jay Inslee received 38%.

In sub­se­quent sur­veys con­duct­ed by Sur­veyUSA as well as Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling and oth­er poll­sters, Cantwell’s sup­port remained steady, with around 51% of respon­dents con­sis­tent­ly say­ing they’d vote for her. Then, in the autumn, her sup­port­ed jumped into the mid to upper fifties. The Wash­ing­ton Poll pinned her sup­port at 61% just pri­or to the elec­tion, which close­ly tracked the offi­cial result.

Elec­tions can be dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, and we can’t be sure of what will hap­pen in the Novem­ber 2018 midterms, but this data rein­forces our belief that Repub­li­cans will be hard pressed to find a can­di­date who can give Cantwell a seri­ous chal­lenge, let alone unseat her. The elec­toral land­scape next year is unlike­ly to be favor­able to them and Wash­ing­ton has­n’t elect­ed a Repub­li­can to the U.S. Sen­ate in decades.

McKen­na only reg­is­tered at 40% in our sur­vey, and it’s hard to think of a more com­pelling can­di­date for the Repub­li­cans than McKenna.

Repub­li­cans already tried field­ing one of the mem­bers of their state Sen­ate cau­cus against Cantwell in the last go-round (Baum­gart­ner), and he flopped. Their bench isn’t deep, so it would seem they don’t have a lot of options.

Cantwell, mean­while, is mak­ing the most of her time at home dur­ing the Fourth of July con­gres­sion­al recess to engage with con­stituents.  She has three Seat­tle-area town halls planned this week: one tonight (on health­care), one on Fri­day (on net neu­tral­i­ty), and anoth­er on Sat­ur­day. All are open to the pub­lic but require tickets.

NPI’s sur­vey of 887 like­ly 2018 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from June 27th-28th, 2017; all respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line. The poll, con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.