Joe Biden talks at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum in 2019
Joe Biden talks at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum in 2019 (Photo: Gage Skidmore, reproduced under Creative Commons license)

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden remains on track to win Wash­ing­ton State by a mar­gin not seen in a pres­i­den­tial race since the 1960s, a sur­vey con­duct­ed last week for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

60% of like­ly vot­ers sur­veyed said Biden was their choice for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, while 37% said they were vot­ing for Don­ald Trump.

2% were not sure.

These num­bers are almost iden­ti­cal to our pre­vi­ous find­ings from last May and from a year ago (Octo­ber of 2019). This new data point just rein­forces that the vast major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans were pre­pared long ago to vote either to reelect Don­ald Trump or vote to replace him with his Demo­c­ra­t­ic challenger.

In our May 2020 sur­vey, 59% expressed sup­port for Biden, 37% expressed sup­port for Trump, and 5% were not sure. In our Octo­ber 2019 sur­vey, 59% pre­ferred Biden, 37% pre­ferred Trump, and 3% were not sure.

(Note that fig­ures don’t always add to one hun­dred per­cent due to rounding.)

Biden’s sup­port has now increased slight­ly to 60% while Trump’s sup­port has remain unchanged. The num­ber of unde­cid­ed vot­ers has diminished.

The fig­ures also mir­ror — exact­ly — our find­ing con­cern­ing Don­ald Trump’s job per­for­mance, which makes sense. The same 60% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who dis­ap­prove of Trump’s job per­for­mance are pre­sum­ably vot­ing for Biden, while the 37% who approve are Trump back­ers who want Trump to get a sec­ond term.

Here are the statewide num­bers again, and the exact ques­tion we asked:

QUESTION: In the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, are you voting
for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden, or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS:

  • Joe Biden: 60%
  • Don­ald Trump: 37%
  • Not sure: 2%

Now, here are the num­bers by age, par­ty, and gen­der identity:

QUESTION: If the can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent this fall were Demo­c­rat Joe Biden and Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

  • Age
    • 18 to 29: 71% for Biden, 29% for Trump
    • 30 to 45: 65% for Biden, 31% for Trump, 4% not sure
    • 46 to 65: 57% for Biden, 42% for Trump; 2% not sure
    • 65 & old­er: 57% for Biden, 40% for Trump, 3% not sure
  • Par­ty
    • Demo­c­ra­t­ic: 92% for Biden, 7% for Trump, 1% not sure
    • Repub­li­can: 91% for Trump, 7% for Biden, 2% not sure
    • Inde­pen­dent: 64% for Biden, 30% for Trump, 6% not sure
  • Gen­der
    • Women: 65% for Biden, 33% for Trump, 3% not sure
    • Men: 57% for Biden, 41% for Trump, 2% not sure
    • Non­bi­na­ry gen­der iden­ti­ty: 33% for Biden, 65% for Trump, 1% not sure (note the mar­gin of error for the non­bi­na­ry gen­der sub­sam­ple is extreme­ly high because only a few respon­dents iden­ti­fied as non­bi­na­ry)

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.

No pres­i­den­tial tick­et has cap­tured more than six­ty per­cent in Wash­ing­ton State since Lyn­don Baines John­son and Hubert Humphrey in 1964. It looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris could be in LBJ and Humphrey ter­ri­to­ry this year.

There will be some minor par­ty can­di­dates list­ed on Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ bal­lots that were not includ­ed as choic­es in our poll, and those can­di­dates are sure to get some votes. The actu­al elec­tion results are thus guar­an­teed to be dif­fer­ent than our find­ing this month and ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, it will be inter­est­ing to see if the gap between Biden and Trump ends up being about twen­ty-three points or so, which is what we’ve been see­ing con­sis­tent­ly in our polling for years.

Unlike with state and local offices, the posi­tions of Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States are not restrict­ed to two sets of can­di­dates (or, to be more accu­rate, two elec­tor slates, because we don’t direct­ly elect the Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.) For all oth­er offices, Wash­ing­ton State law allows only two can­di­dates to be list­ed on the gen­er­al elec­tion ballot.

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.

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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