2022 U.S. Senate race tightens: Patty Murray holds steady as Tiffany Smiley gains ground

The 2022 con­test for Unit­ed States Sen­ate in Wash­ing­ton State is tight­en­ing a bit, as Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley gains ground for the first time while Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Pat­ty Mur­ray holds steady, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est poll of the Wash­ing­ton State elec­torate indicates.

50% of 700 like­ly 2022 vot­ers sur­veyed yes­ter­day and today by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for NPI said they would vote for Mur­ray if the elec­tion were being held today, while 41% said they would vote for Smi­ley. 9% were not sure.

41% is Smi­ley’s best show­ing so far this cycle in our polling, as well as her best show­ing so far in all of the pub­lic polling we know of. In two sur­veys con­duct­ed for NPI last year, in May and Novem­ber of 2021, Smi­ley got 37% both times.

Mur­ray remains ahead by a spread larg­er that the mar­gin of error, has a major­i­ty of sup­port from this pol­l’s respon­dents, and is still favored to win this Novem­ber. But our data sug­gests that Smi­ley is becom­ing more com­pet­i­tive. Her base of vot­ers has grown and the per­cent­age of vot­ers who aren’t sure has shrunk.

Below, each of our find­ings is plot­ted on a chart, show­ing the trend over the course of the cycle. The spread between the two can­di­dates was six­teen points last May, thir­teen points in Novem­ber, and it’s nine points now.

Here’s the full text of the ques­tion we asked, and the answers we received:

QUESTION: If the 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: 50%
• Tiffany Smi­ley: 41%
• Not sure: 9%

Our sur­vey of 700 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th through today, Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 18th, 2022.

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 +/- 3.7% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

In relat­ed news, Sen­a­tor Mur­ray’s approval rat­ing has not budged. It was 46% back in Novem­ber when we last checked, and it is 46% again in this sur­vey. How­ev­er, the per­cent­age of vot­ers who dis­ap­prove has gone up a little:

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

ANSWERS:

• Approve: 46%
• Dis­ap­prove: 42%
• Not sure: 13%

The per­cent­age of vot­ers iden­ti­fy­ing as Demo­c­ra­t­ic in our sam­ple has decreased ever so slight­ly to 38%, while the num­ber iden­ti­fy­ing as inde­pen­dents has gone up 38%. The per­cent­age iden­ti­fy­ing as Repub­li­can is unchanged (24%). We usu­al­ly see fluc­tu­a­tions like this between sur­veys — sta­tis­ti­cal noise is an inevitable facet of pub­lic opin­ion research — but it’s also pos­si­ble the Demo­c­ra­t­ic brand has got­ten a lit­tle weak­er since the last time we field­ed a statewide poll.

What we’re not see­ing, how­ev­er, is a big surge in affil­i­a­tion with the Repub­li­can Par­ty, which Cross­cut’s poll­ster Stu­art Elway sug­gest­ed was hap­pen­ing. I dis­cussed the prob­lems with Elway’s find­ing in a lengthy post here last month.

The good news for Mur­ray is that even though slight­ly greater per­cent­ages of vot­ers are express­ing a pref­er­ence for Smi­ley and dis­ap­prove of her job per­for­mance, she has not been shed­ding sup­port over the course of this omi­cron-laden win­ter sea­son. Mur­ray remains well posi­tioned for reelection.

Giv­en that it’s been six years since she last appeared on a bal­lot — terms for U.S. sen­a­tors are longer than that for any oth­er office in Wash­ing­ton aside from State Supreme Court jus­tice — Mur­ray would ben­e­fit from increas­ing her vis­i­bil­i­ty. NPI con­trib­u­tor Joel Con­nel­ly has made the case that Mur­ray pri­or­i­tize break­ing out of the pro­tec­tive cocoon that often envelops vet­er­an Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors.

In the last midterm cycle that Mur­ray faced vot­ers in — which was all the way back in 2010 — mul­ti­ple polls showed Mur­ray trail­ing Repub­li­can chal­lenger Dino Rossi after he got into the race, includ­ing polls tak­en in the spring­time. Mur­ray cam­paigned hard, how­ev­er, and secured enough of the vote to declare vic­to­ry on Elec­tion Night, deal­ing Rossi his third con­sec­u­tive statewide loss.

There is no cred­i­ble polling and no pub­lic polling that we’re aware of that shows Tiffany Smi­ley close to being even with Mur­ray or ahead of Murray.

Smi­ley appears to have gained some ground in recent weeks, but this still isn’t a close race — at least not yet. NPI does not pub­lish elec­toral rat­ings, but if we did, we’d still con­sid­er this con­test Safe Demo­c­ra­t­ic as of right now.

Every poll is a snap­shot in time, though, and elec­toral dynam­ics can change. That can’t be said often enough. Polit­i­cal analy­sis ben­e­fits from such disclosures.

We will check back in on this and oth­er statewide con­tests after the ver­nal equinox has arrived and the days are longer and warmer.