Jay Inslee leads Loren Culp by sixteen points in Washington’s 2020 gubernatorial race

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and ten like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Octo­ber 14th through Thurs­day, Octo­ber 15th.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respondents.

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

Inslee’s sec­ond term has been char­ac­ter­ized by big changes in the statehouse.

In 2017, Wash­ing­ton’s State Sen­ate flipped Demo­c­ra­t­ic after half a decade of Repub­li­can con­trol, thanks to the vic­to­ry of North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber Man­ka Dhin­gra in the 45th Dis­trict.

In 2018, Democ­rats added sev­en seats to their major­i­ty in the State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and three seats to their major­i­ty in the State Senate.

This year, Democ­rats are attempt­ing to add a few more seats to their majori­ties in each cham­ber. Repub­li­cans’ only seri­ous pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties appear to be in the 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where Democ­rats are work­ing furi­ous­ly to reelect State Sen­a­tor Dean Takko and State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Blake.

While the par­ty is anx­ious to defend its coastal seats, it looks set to remain in con­trol of both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture regard­less of what hap­pens in the 19th. That means that Inslee would enter his third term with friend­ly majori­ties on both sides of the rotun­da, which was not the case in either 2013 or 2017.

The gov­er­nor has ambi­tious goals for the 2021 leg­isla­tive session.

In a recent address to North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute sup­port­ers, Inslee out­lined sev­er­al goals for a third term, includ­ing mean­ing­ful cli­mate action, expand­ing health­care, and strength­en­ing pro­tec­tions for work­ing fam­i­lies. Inslee has also cit­ed bring­ing Wash­ing­ton out of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic with as few deaths and bouts of ill­ness as pos­si­ble as a top pri­or­i­ty of his administration.

Culp has stat­ed that if elect­ed, he would rescind most of Inslee’s emer­gency orders. How­ev­er, he is doing his best to cam­paign as a pro-labor Repub­li­can, which is very inter­est­ing. In a state­ment on his cam­paign web­site, he writes:

I will nev­er sign any Right to Work leg­is­la­tion. That is my com­mit­ment to our won­der­ful union work­ers and their families.

I believe in the val­ue and impor­tance of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and I believe an hon­est day’s work is worth an hon­est day’s wage. It’s the most impor­tant mech­a­nism we have for deter­min­ing the price and terms of dif­fer­ent types of work in our econ­o­my. And in our society.

Though Culp’s cam­paign has for the most part been play­ing to the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s loy­al base, it’s evi­dent from read­ing his cam­paign web­site that he is now try­ing to appeal to Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Demo­c­ra­t­ic lean­ing voters.

It’s not pos­si­ble to win a statewide race in Wash­ing­ton with just the Repub­li­can base, and Culp’s team appears to have belat­ed­ly fig­ured this out. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for them and the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, Culp already has a record of deny­ing cli­mate sci­ence and embrac­ing right wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

While Culp has more sup­port than he did a few months ago, that is most­ly due to hav­ing secured a spot on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, where he is the one and only alter­na­tive to Gov­er­nor Inslee. Dozens of oth­er can­di­dates filed for the posi­tion, but all of them were elim­i­nat­ed in the August Top Two election.

Vot­ing in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is cur­rent­ly in progress and is set to con­clude on Novem­ber 3rd, 2020 at 8 PM Pacif­ic in Wash­ing­ton State.