A frustrated Tim Eyman rubs his eyes
An unhappy Tim Eyman was flanked by glum followers at the Secretary of State's Elections Annex in Olympia. (Photo: Sherry Bockwinkel for NPI).

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.

SurveyUSA/KING5 poll on gubernatorial race
A sum­ma­ry of Sur­veyUSA’s lat­est find­ings for KING5 in the 2020 Wash­ing­ton guber­na­to­r­i­al race, as of May 20th, 2020 (KING5)

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.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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3 replies on “New SurveyUSA poll finds support for Jay Inslee going up as scammer Tim Eyman slips”

  1. Our state is locked down with­out free­dom of assem­bly. We can’t even gath­er to dis­cuss and meet can­di­dates. Inslee will lock us down to Nov to keep us from any oth­er choice.

    1. Incor­rect on all counts, April.

      With respect to in-per­son gath­er­ings: Even before the recent mass protests sup­port­ing Black Lives Mat­ter and social jus­tice, peo­ple who dis­agreed with Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stay home, stay healthy orders were con­gre­gat­ing in vio­la­tion of his direc­tives and they weren’t being punished. 

      With respect to gath­er­ing to dis­cuss and meet­ing can­di­dates: this is an activ­i­ty that can and has been tak­ing place online. Can­di­dates are doing vir­tu­al cam­paign kick­offs and meet ‘n greets. Orga­ni­za­tions like City­Club have moved their events (like Civic Cock­tail) onto vir­tu­al venues like Zoom.

      With respect to the dura­tion of the stay home, stay healthy orders: Restric­tions are grad­u­al­ly being lift­ed through what is being called Safe Start on a coun­ty-by-coun­ty basis. Many coun­ties have already exit­ed Phase I. The gov­er­nor has no inter­est in keep­ing the restric­tions imposed in March in place through the Novem­ber election.

  2. Right wingers aren’t going to like what’s going to hap­pen to them this Novem­ber. We’re fed up with the cor­rup­tion of Don­ald Trump and his Repub­li­can enablers all over the coun­try, and we will be vot­ing them out. If you think this and oth­er cred­i­ble poll data is “fake news”, wait until we get to the fall and you see the elec­tion results! 

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