Patty Murray is currently the highest-rated elected official in King County, NPI poll finds

Vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State’s largest coun­ty are pret­ty hap­py with the job per­for­mance of their Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed offi­cials at the fed­er­al, state, and local lev­els, with Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion get­ting the high­est marks over­all, a poll recent­ly con­duct­ed for NPI across all of King Coun­ty has found.

64% of 2022 like­ly King Coun­ty vot­ers sur­veyed said they approved of Mur­ray’s job per­for­mance, while 26% dis­ap­proved. 9% were not sure.

That com­pares to 65% approval / 31% dis­ap­proval rat­ing for Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, the state’s chief exec­u­tive, who was elect­ed to a third term in 2020.

While Inslee’s approval per­cent­age is as strong as Mur­ray’s, Mur­ray’s net approval (approval minus dis­ap­proval) is four points bet­ter… 38%, to Inslee’s 34%.

That makes Mur­ray the high­est-rat­ed elect­ed offi­cial in the sur­vey, which field­ed from July 22nd until the begin­ning of this month (August 1st).

Also rat­ed in the poll were Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise, and King Coun­ty Asses­sor John Wilson.

Every offi­cial was in pos­i­tive ter­ri­to­ry, as you can see from the answers below:

QUESTION: Please indi­cate whether you approve or dis­ap­prove of the fol­low­ing elect­ed offi­cials’ job performance.

ANSWERS: 

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray (Net: 38%)

• Approve: 64%
• Dis­ap­prove: 26%
• Not sure: 9%

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee (Net: 34%)

• Approve: 65%
• Dis­ap­prove: 31%
• Not sure: 4%

Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell (Net: 34%)

• Approve: 59%
• Dis­ap­prove: 25%
• Not sure: 16%

King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise (Net: 30%)

• Approve: 43%
• Dis­ap­prove: 13%
• Not sure: 44%

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son (Net: 28%)

• Approve: 52%
• Dis­ap­prove: 24%
• Not sure: 24%

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine (Net: 24%)

• Approve: 50%
• Dis­ap­prove: 26%
• Not sure: 24%

Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz (Net: 21%)

• Approve: 36%
• Dis­ap­prove: 15%
• Not sure: 49%

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden (Net: 18%)

• Approve: 57%
• Dis­ap­prove: 39%
• Not sure: 4%

Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris (Net: 14%)

• Approve: 53%
• Dis­ap­prove: 39%
• Not sure: 8%

King Coun­ty Asses­sor John Wil­son (Net: 10%)

• Approve: 26%
• Dis­ap­prove: 16%
• Not sure: 58%

Our sur­vey of 687 like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers was in the field from Fri­day, July 22nd until Tues­day, August 1st, 2022.

The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research. The poll has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.0%.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

Although Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Coun­ty is one of the most Demo­c­ra­t­ic juris­dic­tions in the whole coun­try, these find­ings are nonethe­less sig­nif­i­cant. They nice­ly aug­ment the results of the recent Top Two elec­tion in demon­strat­ing that vot­ers pre­fer con­tin­ued Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance to a Repub­li­can takeover.

As reg­u­lar read­ers are like­ly aware, Repub­li­cans have spo­ken of 2022 repeat­ed­ly as the Year of the Red Tsuna­mi. That includes not only nation­al Repub­li­cans, but local ones, too. The likes of Tim Eyman, Bri­an Hey­wood, and Caleb Heim­lich have glee­ful­ly fan­ta­sized about the prospect of Repub­li­cans gain­ing majori­ties in not one but both cham­bers of the Legislature.

For that to hap­pen, though, they’d need to be able to win in sub­ur­ban leg­isla­tive dis­tricts like the 30th and 47th, which are most­ly locat­ed in… King County.

And as the just-cer­ti­fied Top Two elec­tion results show, vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State’s biggest pop­u­la­tion cen­ter sim­ply aren’t inter­est­ed in dump­ing their Demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion and join­ing up with the Par­ty of Trump.

Vot­ers in King Coun­ty can see that their Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. sen­a­tors are part of a razor slim major­i­ty that has suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­ered the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act, the Hon­or­ing Our PACT Act for vet­er­ans, a long over­due postal reform bill, the ground­break­ing cli­mate and health focused Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, and the con­fir­ma­tion of the most diverse slate of judges ever to be nom­i­nat­ed to the fed­er­al bench, includ­ing new U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Ketan­ji Brown Jackson.

In a field of eigh­teen can­di­dates for Unit­ed States Sen­ate this month, a whop­ping 70.09% of King Coun­ty vot­ers this month backed Pat­ty Mur­ray. Tiffany Smi­ley did­n’t even crack twen­ty per­cent coun­ty­wide in the Top Two election.

So long as Mur­ray keeps Smi­ley at bay in big swing coun­ties like Sno­homish, Pierce, Kit­sap, and What­com, she will be on track to eas­i­ly win anoth­er term thanks to the mas­sive lev­el of sup­port she enjoys in King County.

Our team sees no fea­si­ble path to vic­to­ry for Smi­ley right now. That does­n’t mean Smi­ley is cer­tain to lose — any­thing can hap­pen in pol­i­tics — but there would have to be a polit­i­cal earth­quake to cre­ate an open­ing for Smiley.

There used to be a time — and it was­n’t even that long ago — when Repub­li­cans were com­pet­i­tive in King Coun­ty. Vot­ers once entrust­ed gov­er­nance of the coun­ty to Repub­li­cans like John Spell­man and Louise Miller. (Exec­u­tive Spell­man notably went on to become the last Repub­li­can to win the gov­er­nor­ship, in 1980.)

Those days are over. Repub­li­cans have almost com­plete­ly for­feit­ed the are­na of King Coun­ty pol­i­tics to the Democ­rats. Not a sin­gle Repub­li­can holds coun­ty­wide office any­more, or rep­re­sents the coun­ty in Con­gress. No leg­isla­tive dis­trict with a major­i­ty of its precincts in King Coun­ty has Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It is not uncom­mon to see two Democ­rats fac­ing off in con­tests in King Coun­ty, as was the case last year when Joe Nugyen chal­lenged Dow Con­stan­tine for Executive.

It is nev­er­the­less pos­si­ble to win statewide while los­ing King Coun­ty, as for­mer Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman demon­strat­ed three times.

But for Slade Gor­ton’s “boa con­stric­tor strat­e­gy” to work, a Repub­li­can can­di­date like Smi­ley needs to be able to appeal to at least some of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing vot­ers in King Coun­ty. That’s impor­tant to build­ing a statewide major­i­ty of vot­ers. Even peel­ing off just a few vot­ers in King Coun­ty can make a difference.

Wyman, for exam­ple, out­per­formed guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Rob McKen­na in 2012 in King Coun­ty. He got 37.64% of the vote; she got 39.05%. (Wyman eked out a nar­row vic­to­ry that year over Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival Kath­leen Drew.) Wyman also out­per­formed Bill Bryant in 2016, get­ting 41.3% while Bryant got 32.15%.

It is hard to see Tiffany Smi­ley even equal­ing Bryan­t’s per­for­mance this fall.

Repub­li­cans have tout­ed Smi­ley as a per­fect foil for Mur­ray, but aside from rais­ing a lot of mon­ey, her cam­paign has fall­en com­plete­ly flat, with a huge empha­sis on boil­er­plate in cam­paign mate­ri­als and inef­fec­tive cri­tiques based pri­mar­i­ly on the longevi­ty of Mur­ray’s length of ser­vice in office. Mur­ray’s cam­paign, mean­while, has made sure vot­ers know that Smi­ley is opposed to repro­duc­tive rights and would put Mitch McConnell back in charge of the Unit­ed States Senate.

No inde­pen­dent pub­lic poll has shown Smi­ley close to Mur­ray, let alone ahead.

Our research sug­gests a slight­ly clos­er race than either Crosscut/Elway or Sur­veyUSA and its part­ners, prompt­ing right wing talk show host Jason Rantz to recent­ly cite our polling on-air when pro­mot­ing Smi­ley’s candidacy.

Rantz neglect­ed to men­tion, of course, that we have con­sis­tent­ly assessed that Tiffany Smi­ley is not putting Wash­ing­ton in play for the Repub­li­cans every sin­gle time we’ve released one of our U.S. Sen­ate poll findings.

Even if Smi­ley were run­ning the best pos­si­ble cam­paign Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have seen from a Repub­li­can in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, she’d still have to con­tend with Mur­ray’s advan­tage in King Coun­ty. As today’s polling release shows, vot­ers here are not vot­ing for Mur­ray reluc­tant­ly. More than three in five have a pos­i­tive view of Mur­ray’s job per­for­mance, and Mur­ray has a bet­ter net job per­for­mance rat­ing than any oth­er high pro­file elect­ed offi­cial around. That is a key rea­son why Mur­ray is well posi­tioned to eas­i­ly pre­vail over Smi­ley this autumn.