NPI’s 2020 October elections survey provides a rich political portrait of Washington State

NPI’s recent statewide sur­vey of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers has afford­ed wel­come relief from all those cable tele­vi­sion pun­dits jab­ber­ing about Geor­gia and Flori­da, while refus­ing to ven­ture a pre­dic­tion that might come back to bite them.

Alas, the sur­vey, con­duct­ed by NPI’s long­time part­ner Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, has unnerved the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the state’s pro­gres­sive move­ment with its find­ing that incum­bent Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal was gar­ner­ing just thir­ty per­cent and lead­ing Maia Espinoza, who would gov­ern as our own local ver­sion of Bet­sy DeVos, by only sev­en points.

The Democ­rats have launched an eleventh hour res­cue of Reyk­dal, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tor, com­bin­ing email mis­sives with a per­sua­sive, upbeat TV spot. The voice of Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal (D‑7th Dis­trict) in praise of Reyk­dal, fol­lowed me up to the study.

But NPI’s sur­vey, the only pub­lic poll to look far down­bal­lot this year, has a wider val­ue: it pro­vides a polit­i­cal self-por­trait of this cor­ner of the “Left Coast”.

Briefly a “pur­ple” state at the start of the cen­tu­ry – George W. Bush read from “The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar” in Span­ish to Yaki­ma school kids – Wash­ing­ton has become reli­ably blue and is singing the Trump blues.

Sports colum­nists and polit­i­cal ana­lysts are into the game of “Six Take­aways” these days, so let me do that with NPI’s findings.

Comprehensive sexual health education is popular

Wash­ing­ton is a sec­u­lar state. Hope spring eter­nal in the bosoms of the reli­gious right, but Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have a strong tra­di­tion of sup­port­ing pri­va­cy, the right to do your thing, and both free­dom of and free­dom from religion.

Such out­fits as the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Cen­ter forced a 2009 ref­er­en­dum after the Leg­is­la­ture legal­ized same-sex part­ner­ships. They lost.

They forced a vote in 2012 on mar­riage equal­i­ty. They lost spec­tac­u­lar­ly, with the last­ing visu­al image of Catholics for Mar­riage Equal­i­ty putting five hun­dred demon­stra­tors on the lawn of St. James Cathedral.

Arch­bish­op Sar­tain was preach­ing against what he called gay “mar­riage.”

The same result is like­ly this year with sex edu­ca­tion. Repub­li­cans are run­ning on their oppo­si­tion. But NPI/PPP found fifty-six per­cent in favor of Ref­er­en­dum 90, approv­ing sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion, with just thir­ty-three per­cent opposed.

Democrats are well positioned to win most executive races

The Repub­li­can Par­ty has a base in Wash­ing­ton, just not a home base.

Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful Loren Culp comes in at forty per­cent, Attor­ney Gen­er­al hope­ful Matt Larkin at thir­ty-nine per­cent. The Repub­li­cans’ attrac­tive 2016 guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Bill Bryant came in just over forty-five percent.

The base is in East­ern Wash­ing­ton, Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton and South­west Wash­ing­ton. The Repub­li­cans can’t get to first base in Cen­tral Puget Sound pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. On rare occa­sion, like with Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 976, the right can win with what was called the “boa con­stric­tor strat­e­gy in the Slade Gor­ton era, sur­round­ing and squeez­ing pop­u­lous King County.

No deal this year.

Only Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman reg­is­ters high­er, lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Gael Tar­leton (an NPI board­mem­ber) by a six point mar­gin, with forty-nine per­cent to Tar­leton’s forty-three per­cent. Repub­li­cans have held the posi­tion of Sec­re­tary of STate since 1965, treat­ing it like an entitlement.

The Repub­li­cans’ oth­er statewide office­hold­er, State Trea­sur­er Duane David­son, trails Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti by a ten point mar­gin, and is like­ly a goner. Pel­lic­ciot­ti pre­vailed in the August Top Two election.

Donald Trump is the anvil atop the Republican ticket

Don­ald Trump is a death star for Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans, and is like­ly to leave behind scorched earth on which it will be dif­fi­cult to get any­thing to grow.

Trump trails Joe Biden by twen­ty-three point mar­gin in NPI’s sur­vey, and has a six­ty per­cent job dis­ap­proval rat­ing in the Ever­green State.

The per­cent­age who dis­ap­prove climbs to sev­en­ty-two per­cent in pop­u­lous King Coun­ty, home to Seat­tle and Belle­vue and their sub­urbs. Only in East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton does the incum­ben­t’s approval-dis­ap­proval rat­ing break even.

Bill Bryant out­ran Trump by more than 220,000 votes in 2016.

Ask Bill and he will give you the exact fig­ure. Still, he took just under thir­ty-three per­cent of the vote in King Coun­ty. A trio of Repub­li­cans on the 2020 bal­lot – Wyman, Larkin and Culp – run ahead of Trump in NPI’s survey.

How will the Repub­li­cans ever climb out of their hole if the par­ty base in Wash­ing­ton con­sists of a “Trump rump”? Con­sid­er all the con­stituen­cies, many of them grow­ing, who are exclud­ed from such a base.

King Coun­ty has become, in a gen­er­a­tion, the Democ­rats’ heart­land in Wash­ing­ton, usu­al­ly joined by grow­ing (pop­u­la­tion 839,000) Sno­homish Coun­ty. The pol­l’s fig­ures on Trump job approval tell much of the sto­ry. So does the absence of a Repub­li­can “bench” in the state’s most pop­u­lous county.

The Trump approval fig­ures for North Puget Sound and South Puget Sound indi­cate that, to find the Repub­li­can “base,” you must trav­el one hun­dred miles north of Seat­tle (to Fer­n­dale or Lyn­den), nine­ty miles south (to Cen­tralia-Chelalis) or cross the Cas­cade Range to Cen­tral and East­ern Washington.

The last Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors in exur­ban east King County’s 5th Dis­trict were beat­en in 2018, while even in 2016, two King/Pierce Coun­ty House seats in the 30th Dis­trict flipped and Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son was elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2018, turn­ing out Mark Milos­cia. At the same time, Democ­rats flipped the 47th Dis­trict, elect­ing Mona Das and Debra Enten­man. Repub­li­cans do still have three peo­ple on the “non­par­ti­san” coun­ty coun­cil; but that’s about it.

State Supreme Court races don’t get much attention

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers don’t tune in to State Supreme Court races.

Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis and G. Helen Whiten­er, appoint­ed to the high court by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, reg­is­ter at just twen­ty-one and twen­ty-two per­cent sup­port in NPI’s Octo­ber sur­vey. Oppo­nents David Larsen and Richard Serns are below twen­ty per­cent. Still, those fig­ures were high­er than what NPI found last spring.

A lot of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers guess in their court picks. Famil­iar-sound­ing names car­ry an advan­tage. Racism reared its ugly head when a non­de­script oppo­nent beat Jus­tice Steve Gon­za­lez in sev­er­al East­ern Wash­ing­ton counties.

The result: Last minute cam­paigns, under­writ­ten by lumi­nar­ies of the state bar, are often need­ed to bail out qual­i­fied candidates.

NPI alert­ed KIRO’s Essex Porter to the need for cov­er­age of Gon­za­lez’s most recent reelec­tion, in which he was opposed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Nathan Choi; Porter’s crew sub­se­quent­ly filmed Choi run­ning away from Porter on the street.

Or, as in 2016, a heavy-hand­ed right-wing smear cam­paign draws sup­port for judges being attacked. Soft-on-crime TV spots rarely work in Washington.

We’re all set for two more years of a Democratic trifecta

The Democ­rats’ lock on the state­house won’t get picked this year.

The state has elect­ed five suc­ces­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors, since Demo­c­rat and Wey­er­haeuser heir Booth Gard­ner oust­ed Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor John Spell­man in 1984. Inslee is seek­ing to become only the sec­ond Wash­ing­ton gov­er­nor, after the leg­endary Dan Evans, to win three suc­ces­sive terms.

Only one state comes close to Wash­ing­ton’s streak: its south­ern neighbor.

Oregon’s unbro­ken line­up of Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors began in 1986 with elec­tion of for­mer Port­land May­or Neil Gold­schmidt. The Beaver State, at the time, had a tra­di­tion of elect­ing par­tial­ly pro­gres­sive Repub­li­cans to statewide office.

The cur­rent incum­bent, Gov­er­nor Kate Brown, hung on in 2018 despite heavy financ­ing of her oppo­nent by Nike founder Phil Knight.

Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty (Port­land) has become the Beaver State’s equiv­a­lent of our King Coun­ty, report­ing late with top-heavy Demo­c­ra­t­ic majorities.

A pair of admo­ni­tions to conclude.

A poll is a snap­shot in time. Time change. Wash­ing­ton has two pre­vi­ous three-term gov­er­nors, Dan Evans and Arthur Lan­glie. Both were Repub­li­cans. (Langlie’s tenure was inter­rupt­ed by one-term Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Mon­rad Wallgren.)

And NPI has hired itself an hon­est pollster.

Past sur­veys by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling detect­ed drops in Barack Obama’s job approval rat­ings ear­ly, as well as fore­shad­owed the “shel­lack­ings” (Obama’s words) that Democ­rats took in the 2010 and 2014 midterms.

Wash­ing­ton may tilt Demo­c­ra­t­ic, but vot­ers expect Democ­rats to gov­ern well, with majori­ties in both the Leg­is­la­ture and exec­u­tive depart­ment. The par­ty must deliv­er if it wants a steady dose of good news in the future.