Kim Wyman ahead in tight Secretary of State contest; NPI’s Gael Tarleton gaining ground

The most close­ly con­test­ed race for a statewide posi­tion in Wash­ing­ton this year isn’t for Gov­er­nor, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, or Attor­ney Gen­er­al, but for Sec­re­tary of State, the office respon­si­ble for the admin­is­tra­tion of Wash­ing­ton’s elec­tions, archives, library, cor­po­ra­tions and char­i­ties, and address con­fi­den­tial­i­ty program.

Two can­di­dates made it through to the Novem­ber 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion: Repub­li­can incum­bent Kim Wyman and Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Gael Tar­leton, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most senior boardmember.

Like Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, Wyman is seek­ing a third term, hav­ing won her first statewide cam­paign in 2012 when her pre­de­ces­sor Sam Reed retired. She placed first in the August Top Two elec­tion with 50.89%, win­ning every coun­ty except for King, San Juan, and Jefferson.

Wyman still has the edge in the race, accord­ing to our research, but the race has got­ten clos­er. 49% of respon­dents to our sur­vey said they were vot­ing for Wyman, while 43% said they were vot­ing for Tar­leton and 8% were not sure.

Wyman had a 7.6 advan­tage in the August Top Two elec­tion, and a recent Sur­veyUSA poll con­duct­ed for KING5 found her with a five point lead, though that poll put Wyman’s share of the vote at only 45%, as opposed to 49%.

Since we now have mul­ti­ple statewide polls show­ing a clos­er race than what we saw in the August Top Two elec­tion results, it’s fair to say that Tar­leton is gain­ing ground. To win, how­ev­er, she’ll need to quick­en the pace of her progress.

Vot­ing is under­way; 17.6% of bal­lots statewide have already been returned fol­low­ing the first week­end with­in the tra­di­tion­al eigh­teen day vot­ing period.

At this same junc­ture in 2016, only 6.2% of bal­lots had been returned across the state, accord­ing to a data com­par­i­son pro­vid­ed by Wyman’s office on its bal­lot return sta­tis­tics page. The rate of return this cycle is almost three times that right now, which demon­strates that peo­ple are heed­ing exhor­ta­tions to vote early.

As a Repub­li­can in a state that usu­al­ly votes for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates, Kim Wyman is no stranger to close statewide elections.

Her first win for Sec­re­tary of State was in 2012, when she won by 21,873 votes out of 2,907,609 total votes cast, with just 50.38% of the vote.

Wyman nar­row­ly defeat­ed for­mer State Sen­a­tor Kath­leen Drew to extend the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s win­ning streak for the posi­tion, which goes back decades.

Wyman won a sec­ond term four years ago by a wider mar­gin, hand­i­ly defeat­ing for­mer Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Tina Pod­lodows­ki, who sub­se­quent­ly became the Chair of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

Wyman has two main cam­paign themes this year: Expe­ri­ence (which has been a theme in each of her past cam­paigns) and “non­par­ti­san­ship” (despite her record of enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion in Repub­li­can Par­ty pol­i­tics).

Watch Wyman’s gen­er­al elec­tion TV ad, “Plan”, by click­ing Play below.

NPI’s Gael Tar­leton’s cam­paign themes are bol­ster­ing cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, strength­en­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion, and improv­ing access to the bal­lot. She is deeply con­cerned about for­eign inter­fer­ence in our elec­tions, and says Wyman has­n’t done any­where near enough to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton’s data and vot­ing infra­struc­ture from bad actors.

Tar­leton’s gen­er­al elec­tion spot points out that Wyman has stat­ed that it isn’t her job to stand up to Don­ald Trump, who is unques­tion­ably the top domes­tic threat to efforts to hold free and fair elec­tions in 2020.

Watch Tar­leton’s gen­er­al elec­tion TV ad, “Defend”, by click­ing Play below.

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.