Poll Watch: Tina Podlodowski narrowly ahead of Kim Wyman; I‑732 well under fifty percent

With Novem­ber 8th only a month away, we’re start­ing to see new polling released on a near-dai­ly basis. Today, KOMO TV and Strate­gies 360 released a new set of results from a recent poll they col­lab­o­rat­ed on, while Tina Pod­lodowski’s cam­paign dis­trib­uted find­ings from a poll show­ing Pod­lodows­ki nar­row­ly ahead of incum­bent Repub­li­can Kim Wyman in the con­test for Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State.

With Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray wide­ly expect­ed to cruise to new terms, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son with­out a Repub­li­can oppo­nent this year, the mar­quee matchups are fur­ther downballot.

Per­haps no con­test is con­sid­ered to be as close as that for Sec­re­tary of State. Incum­bent Kim Wyman is the only Repub­li­can cur­rent­ly serv­ing in the exec­u­tive depart­ment, and faces an incred­i­bly strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger in for­mer Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber and expe­ri­enced busi­ness leader Tina Podlodowski.

In the August Top Two elec­tion, Wyman gar­nered 47.9%. Pod­lodows­ki fin­ished only 23,882 votes behind, cap­tur­ing 46.13% of the vote.

Democ­rats are fired up about Pod­lodowski’s chances, while Repub­li­cans are increas­ing­ly ner­vous about Wyman’s.

Pod­lodowski’s cam­paign has just giv­en them anoth­er rea­son to be con­cerned by releas­ing fresh polling that shows Pod­lodows­ki ahead.

Norm­ing­ton Petts — which also counts Hillary Clin­ton, Jason Kan­der, and Tam­my Duck­worth as clients — reports that in a sur­vey con­duct­ed from Sep­tem­ber 27th-29th of six hun­dred like­ly Novem­ber vot­ers, 35% of respon­dents said they planned to vote for Pod­lodows­ki, while only 31% planned to vote for Wyman.

“Pod­lodows­ki leads despite the fact that near­ly twice as many vot­ers know Wyman,” not­ed NP’s Jill Norm­ing­ton in a memo pre­pared for pub­lic distribution.

“Not only is Pod­lodows­ki already ahead of Wyman, the major­i­ty of unde­cid­ed vot­ers are Democ­rats. Of the 34% who are cur­rent­ly unde­cid­ed, 53% are Democ­rats, while 25% are Inde­pen­dents and 22% are Repub­li­cans. More­over, the unde­cid­ed vot­ers at the Sec­re­tary of State lev­el are vot­ing for Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for reelec­tion 51%-21%. If Pod­lodows­ki has the nec­es­sary resources to per­suade these unde­cid­ed vot­ers, she will be in a strong posi­tion to win in November.”

The Norm­ing­ton Petts sur­vey has a mar­gin of error of ±4.0%

Mean­while, Strate­gies 360 and KOMO TV have released results that show U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray with a com­fy lead over Repub­li­can chal­lenger Chris Vance.

“In this poll of 500 like­ly vot­ers inter­viewed statewide, 57% said they would vote for Mur­ray, as opposed to 36% for Vance,” report­ed KOMO’s Robert Mak. “Mur­ray, first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 1992, main­tains a high approval rat­ing with 57% view­ing her favor­ably, and 30% hav­ing an unfa­vor­able impression.”

KOMO/Strategies 360 also released results for three of the six ini­tia­tives that are appear­ing on Wash­ing­ton’s bal­lot. They found:

• 62% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 1433 (min­i­mum wage and paid leave);
• 79% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 1491 (extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders);
• 42% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 732 (Car­bon­WA’s tax swap scheme).

Back in June, NPI and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling asked a sam­ple of like­ly vot­ers about these same ini­tia­tives, and found the following:

• 58% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 1433 (min­i­mum wage and paid leave);
• 73% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 1491 (extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders);
• 52% sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 732 (Car­bon­WA’s tax swap scheme).

I‑1433 and I‑1491 polled 4% and 6% high­er, respec­tive­ly, in the KOMO/Strategies 360 poll than in our poll, which sug­gests that vot­ers are actu­al­ly becom­ing more enthused about these pro­gres­sive ideas, not less. That’s encouraging.

The same can­not be said about Car­bon­WA’s I‑732, a pro­pos­al to levy a tax on pol­lu­tants and use the rev­enue to can­cel out sales and B&O tax­es — includ­ing much of what’s left of Boe­ing’s already-reduced tax obligations.

With a month left to go, I‑732 is under water. Only 42% of respon­dents sur­veyed by KOMO/Strategies 360 indi­cat­ed sup­port for I‑732. 37% indi­cat­ed oppo­si­tion, and 21% report­ed that they are undecided.

Unde­cid­ed vot­ers can swing yes or no, as Car­bon­WA point­ed out sev­er­al weeks ago after Stu­art Elway pub­lished research show­ing lack­lus­ter sup­port for I‑732 and a high num­ber of unde­cid­ed vot­ers. How­ev­er, it is more com­mon for unde­cid­ed vot­ers to break no than yes when a strong oppo­si­tion cam­paign is in place to effec­tive­ly make the argu­ments against. When in doubt, peo­ple tend to vote no.

I‑732 arguably faces stronger oppo­si­tion than any of the oth­er ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot this year. Though NPI would very much like to put a price on pol­lu­tion, we oppose I‑732 because we believe it is fatal­ly flawed. So does the labor com­mu­ni­ty and pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions like OneAmerica.

KOMO/Strategies 360 appear not to have polled on I‑1501, I‑1464, or I‑735, which are also on Wash­ing­ton’s Novem­ber 2016 statewide ballot.