Senator Patty Murray regains double digit lead over Republican opponent Tiffany Smiley

Wash­ing­ton State’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray has reestab­lished a dou­ble dig­it lead over her Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley with two months to go until the dead­line to return bal­lots in the August 2022 Top Two elec­tion, NPI’s most recent statewide sur­vey of the Wash­ing­ton State elec­torate has found.

51% of 1,039 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers said they would vote for Mur­ray if the elec­tion were being held today, while 40% said they would vote for Smi­ley, Mur­ray’s like­ly gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent. 8% were not sure.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, Mur­ray’s lead stood at nine points, down from thir­teen back in Novem­ber of 2021 and six­teen points one year ago (May 2021). Now it’s eleven points. That means Mur­ray’s advan­tage is once again in the dou­ble digits.

In each of our statewide sur­veys this cycle, Mur­ray has received sup­port of fifty per­cent or greater. This con­sis­tent major­i­ty sup­port indi­cates, as I’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten here, that Mur­ray is well posi­tioned for reelec­tion. Tiffany Smi­ley has excit­ed the Repub­li­can base and raised a lot of mon­ey, but has not suc­ceed­ed in putting Wash­ing­ton State in play for the Repub­li­can Par­ty this cycle.

Repub­li­cans have a long his­to­ry of incor­rect­ly insist­ing that Mur­ray is vulnerable:

• They argued Mur­ray was vul­ner­a­ble in 1998, when they recruit­ed Lin­da Smith to run against her. Mur­ray won reelection.
• They argued Mur­ray was vul­ner­a­ble in 2004, when they recruit­ed George Nether­cutt to run against her. Mur­ray won reelection.
• And they argued Mur­ray was vul­ner­a­ble in 2010, when they recruit­ed Dino Rossi to run against her. As before, Mur­ray won reelection.

Repub­li­cans made less of an effort to chal­lenge Mur­ray dur­ing her most recent cam­paign six years ago, when Chris Vance was her gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent (Vance has since left the Repub­li­can Par­ty), but this year, they seem to be back at it, with D.C. Repub­li­cans like Hen­ry Olsen pro­mot­ing Smi­ley as a dark horse.

Our team does­n’t see an open­ing for Smi­ley. Wash­ing­ton is a reli­ably Demo­c­ra­t­ic state that has not elect­ed a Repub­li­can to the U.S. Sen­ate since 1994, and there’s no sign of that chang­ing this year. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans may be frus­trat­ed by Capi­tol Hill grid­lock and inac­tion on impor­tant issues, but that does­n’t mean they want to be rep­re­sent­ed by a Repub­li­can who’ll do Mitch McConnel­l’s bidding.

In just a few weeks, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers will start receiv­ing bal­lots and it will be time to vote in the ini­tial round of Wash­ing­ton’s two part gen­er­al election.

For Smi­ley to make this a real race, she’d need to be gain­ing ground — and our lat­est sur­vey indi­cates she isn’t doing that. Instead, Smi­ley’s stalled out, despite Repub­li­can claims that the nation­al envi­ron­ment is dete­ri­o­rat­ing for Democrats.

Mur­ray’s approval was 46% in Feb­ru­ary, with 42% dis­ap­prov­ing; now it’s 45% who approve and 42% who dis­ap­prove. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, that’s the same result.

As I often say when we release new polling data, this find­ing is a snap­shot in time. Elec­toral dynam­ics can change. Polls can­not pre­dict what will hap­pen, they just make it eas­i­er to get a sense of what could hap­pen and is most like­ly to hap­pen. The most like­ly out­come in this race, based on NPI’s research and oth­er avail­able pub­lic opin­ion polling (includ­ing sur­veys done by KING5/SurveyUSA) is anoth­er suc­cess­ful reelec­tion for Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

Again, as the chart below makes clear, Pat­ty Mur­ray has nev­er received less than fifty per­cent in our polling and has nev­er trailed Smi­ley. In con­trast, when for­mer state Sen­a­tor Dino Rossi declared that he was chal­leng­ing Mur­ray in 2020, some polls showed him ahead. That has not been the case this time around.

In just two months’ time, we’ll have actu­al ini­tial elec­tion results to study instead of just polling, which will be illu­mi­nat­ing. We plan to poll this race one more time, in Octo­ber, which will be the fifth time that we will have checked in with vot­ers about their pref­er­ences for U.S. Sen­ate this cycle. We look for­ward to bring­ing you that find­ing dur­ing the final weeks of these midterm elections.