New SurveyUSA poll finds support for Jay Inslee going up as scammer Tim Eyman slips

Noto­ri­ous scam­mer and con artist Tim Eyman is expe­ri­enc­ing neg­a­tive momen­tum in his guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign while pop­u­lar sup­port for Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee increas­es, a new Sur­veyUSA poll con­duct­ed for KING5 sug­gests.

50% of those sur­veyed in the poll said they would vote to reelect Inslee, com­pared to 39% who said they’d vote to reelect Inslee in Jan­u­ary, in a pre­vi­ous statewide poll also con­duct­ed by Sur­veyUSA for KING5.

Eyman, on the oth­er hand, went from hav­ing 11% sup­port in Jan­u­ary to 8% in the poll con­duct­ed this week, drop­ping into the sin­gle digits.

That’s cer­tain­ly embar­rass­ing for Eyman, but is some­thing that hon­est Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who val­ue integri­ty can take great com­fort in.

The oth­er Repub­li­cans in the race have even less sup­port than Eyman.

Phil For­tu­na­to and Joshua Freed each polled at 6%, while Loren Culp polled at 4%. Col­lec­tive­ly, the entire field of Repub­li­can can­di­dates received just 24%, less than half of the sup­port indi­cat­ed for Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee in the survey.

Anoth­er 23% were undecided.

By way of com­par­i­son, four years ago, at about this time, mul­ti­ple sur­veys (by Moore Infor­ma­tion and Elway Research) put Jay Inslee’s sup­port in the mid to high for­ties, while find­ing Repub­li­can chal­lenger Bill Bryant had sup­port at 36%.

Inslee is now run­ning for a third term — some­thing no incum­bent gov­er­nor has sought since the leg­endary Dan Evans in the 1970s — and yet accord­ing to the pub­lic opin­ion research data we have so far, Inslee is find­ing more sup­port among Wash­ing­ton vot­ers than he did for his sec­ond term.

Inslee’s job approval rat­ings have also shot up since Jan­u­ary of 2020.

“By more than 2:1, Wash­ing­ton state res­i­dents say Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee is doing a bet­ter job respond­ing to COVID-19, the Coro­n­avirus, than Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, accord­ing to fresh Sur­veyUSA opin­ion research con­duct­ed for KING-TV in Seat­tle. 61% statewide say Inslee has respond­ed to the pan­dem­ic the bet­ter of the two; 29% say Trump has respond­ed bet­ter,” Sur­veyUSA report­ed.

The poll­ster, which is a long­time KING5 part­ner, also observed that Inslee’s net job approval rat­ing has increased twen­ty-nine points over the past ten weeks, demon­strat­ing that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are sat­is­fied with Inslee’s man­age­ment of the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, which has whacked Wash­ing­ton’s economy.

What the data sug­gests to us is that Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are increas­ing­ly com­fort­able with keep­ing Inslee in the state’s top job while total­ly under­whelmed by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s his­tor­i­cal­ly awful field of candidates.

Repub­li­cans like Caleb Heim­lich have claimed that Jay Inslee is vul­ner­a­ble and unpop­u­lar, but that is clear­ly just wish­ful think­ing on their part.

Despite no evi­dence to sup­port their posi­tion, they con­tin­ue to cling to the fan­ta­sy that they’re on the verge of turn­ing the state red, with RNC Chair Rom­na McDaniel insist­ing to right wing talk show host Jason Rantz recent­ly that

KING5’s poll­ster also polled on the Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor’s race and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s race. For Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, Sur­veyUSA found a small plu­ral­i­ty for Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Den­ny Heck, who was the leader among the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. That find­ing broke down as follows:

• Den­ny Heck, Demo­c­rat: 15%
• Joseph Brum­bles, Repub­li­can: 10%
• Steve Hobbs, Demo­c­rat: 10% (Hobbs has with­drawn from the race)
• Ann Davi­son Sat­tler, Repub­li­can: 9%
• Marko Liias, Demo­c­rat: 6%
• Unde­cid­ed: 50%

For Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Sur­veyUSA found Bob Fer­gu­son in a com­mand­ing position.

• Bob Fer­gu­son, Demo­c­rat (incum­bent): 47%
• Matt Larkin, Repub­li­can: 8%
• Brett Rogers, Repub­li­can: 8%
• Mike Vas­ka, Repub­li­can: 4%
• Unde­cid­ed: 32%

Sur­veyUSA appar­ent­ly did not ask vot­ers about the statewide par­ti­san race that is like­ly to be the most com­pet­i­tive this year — the con­test between Repub­li­can Kim Wyman and NPI’s Gael Tar­leton, Wyman’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger, for Sec­re­tary of State. That’s the exec­u­tive depart­ment posi­tion that over­sees elec­tions, cor­po­ra­tions, char­i­ties, the state archives, and the state library.