Senator Patty Murray has a strong early lead in 2022 U.S. Senate race, NPI poll finds

Wash­ing­ton’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray is in healthy shape for reelec­tion with about a year and a half to go until the 2022 midterm elec­tions are held, a new sur­vey for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

53% of a large sam­ple of like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sur­veyed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling this week for NPI said they would vote for Mur­ray, a Demo­c­rat, if the elec­tion was being held today, while 37% said they would back Mur­ray’s declared Repub­li­can oppo­nent Tiffany Smi­ley. 10% said they were not sure.

Mur­ray, a mem­ber of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, is a vet­er­an appro­pri­a­tor who chairs the HELP (Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor & Pen­sions) Com­mit­tee. Mur­ray for­mal­ly announced the launch her 2022 reelec­tion cam­paign last week. The Sen­a­tor is a spon­sor of NPI’s research and advo­ca­cy, though Mur­ray’s cam­paign had no involve­ment in the design or exe­cu­tion of our survey.

Smi­ley is a self-described “farm girl from rur­al Wash­ing­ton” who has a lengthy his­to­ry of advo­ca­cy for vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies, includ­ing her own hus­band, Scot­ty, who lost his eye­sight while serv­ing Amer­i­ca over­seas in Iraq. Backed by the WSRP, Smi­ley announced her can­di­da­cy for Sen­ate sev­er­al weeks ago.

Our sur­vey of 992 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, May 25th through Wednes­day, May 26th, 2021.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.1% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

A small­er per­cent­age of respon­dents expressed sat­is­fac­tion with Mur­ray’s job per­for­mance. 40% said they approved, a plu­ral­i­ty, with 36% dis­ap­prov­ing and 24% not sure. 40% may sound some­what fee­ble for a vet­er­an U.S. sen­a­tor, but it does­n’t actu­al­ly dif­fer that much from the his­tor­i­cal norm. As poll­ster Stu­art Elway explained in a 2010 research note writ­ten eleven Mays ago: “Murray’s rat­ings his­tor­i­cal­ly have been mediocre, which is tempt­ing to poten­tial challengers.” 

Mur­ray missed an impor­tant vote today on advanc­ing leg­is­la­tion to estab­lish a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6th attacks. Mur­ray said in a state­ment that she had to return home to attend to a fam­i­ly mat­ter, but would have vot­ed yes had she remained in D.C. (Nei­ther Mur­ray’s vote nor that of Kyrsten Sine­ma’s would have allowed the Sen­ate to break the filibuster.)

Lack­lus­ter job approval rat­ings have not held Mur­ray back at elec­tion time. Mur­ray has nev­er lost a Unit­ed States Sen­ate race, and only one of her reelec­tion vic­to­ries has been by any­thing resem­bling a close mar­gin. When it counts, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers show up for Pat­ty Mur­ray and give her their support.

Repub­li­cans have recent­ly been trum­pet­ing the results of a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Sur­veyUSA for KING5 as evi­dence that Mur­ray is vul­ner­a­ble in 2022. The sur­vey con­tained a ques­tion ask­ing vot­ers whether Mur­ray should or should not run for a sixth term (a plu­ral­i­ty respond­ed in the neg­a­tive). I explained why this ques­tion was prob­lem­at­ic and the results there­fore worth­less ear­li­er this month.

To find out what vot­ers’ views real­ly are, it’s impor­tant to ask a neu­tral ques­tion, and that’s exact­ly what we did in our sur­vey this week. Here’s the word­ing of our job per­for­mance ques­tion and the answers that we received:

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray’s job performance?

ANSWERS:

• Approve: 40%
• Dis­ap­prove: 36%
• Not sure: 24%

As we can see, vot­ers express a lot more enthu­si­asm for Mur­ray when asked whether they would vote for her or her Repub­li­can opponent:

QUESTION: If the 2022 elec­tion for Unit­ed States Sen­ate were being held today and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Pat­ty Mur­ray and Repub­li­can Tiffany Smi­ley, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Pat­ty Mur­ray: 53%
• Tiffany Smi­ley: 37%
• Not sure: 10%

The above is what’s com­mon­ly known as a horser­ace or matchup ques­tion, because it presents a hypo­thet­i­cal to the respon­dents and asks how they would vote. Here, Mur­ray has a com­fort­able six­teen point lead.

What’s inter­est­ing about that num­ber is that it’s the exact same mar­gin we found Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell ahead of Repub­li­can oppo­nent Susan Hutchi­son by three years ago, with five months to go until the Novem­ber 2018 midterm elec­tions. And, it’s the exact same spread that Cantwell actu­al­ly won by!

Take a look:

Giv­en that Mur­ray’s lead over Smi­ley is the same size as Cantwell’s lead over Hutchi­son was after Hutchi­son emerged as Cantwell’s like­ly chal­lenger, we can say that Mur­ray is well posi­tioned to win reelec­tion, at least at this juncture.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, Shift­WA, and oth­ers are free to believe that Mur­ray is vul­ner­a­ble and our polling not cred­i­ble if they want. But our track record speaks for itself. We and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling have been work­ing togeth­er to mea­sure pub­lic opin­ion in the Pacif­ic North­west for a long time.

Not only did our 2018 U.S. Sen­ate polling hit the mark three years ago, but our 2020 polling cor­rect­ly fore­shad­owed the result in every sin­gle statewide can­di­date elec­tion. Not just in one, or two, but all of them. Every last one.

It’s impor­tant to note that this find­ing is a snap­shot in time, and the elec­toral envi­ron­ment could change between now and Novem­ber of 2022. So we’ll con­tin­ue to check in with Wash­ing­ton vot­ers peri­od­i­cal­ly between now and then to see if any­thing changes, and pub­lish our find­ings here on the Cas­ca­dia Advocate.