Elections

Patty Murray up by twelve points in NPI statewide pollster’s latest Washington survey

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray con­tin­ues to enjoy a dou­ble dig­it lead over Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley in Wash­ing­ton State’s 2022 U.S. Sen­ate race, new­ly released polling sug­gests, indi­cat­ing that Mur­ray remains on track for reelec­tion as we have con­sis­tent­ly assessed through­out this cycle.

52% of sev­en hun­dred and sev­en­ty respon­dents inter­viewed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling this week said they’d vote for Mur­ray if the elec­tion were being held today, while 40% said they’d back Smi­ley. 8% were undecided.

These num­bers are very sim­i­lar to what Elway Research found last week and they’re also sim­i­lar to the per­cent­ages we released back in June when our last statewide poll (which was con­duct­ed by PPP) fielded.

Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling is one of two firms that NPI cur­rent­ly works with to car­ry out its pub­lic opin­ion research projects. While we did not com­mis­sion this sur­vey, the head-to-head ques­tion in it resem­bles the U.S. Sen­ate horser­ace ques­tion that we ask when we have PPP field a statewide poll for us in Washington.

This is the sixth con­sec­u­tive time this cycle that PPP has found Mur­ray with a lead over Smi­ley that’s well beyond the mar­gin of error, includ­ing the four statewide polls the firm has con­duct­ed on behalf of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute.

“We don’t see this as a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pet­i­tive race,” PPP’s Tom Jensen wrote in a tweet announc­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of the lat­est Murray/Smiley finding.

That’s because it’s not. Aside from not-cred­i­ble polls con­duct­ed by Repub­li­can-aligned firms like Trafal­gar, there isn’t any evi­dence that Tiffany Smi­ley is putting Wash­ing­ton State into play for the Repub­li­can Party.

That’s not stop­ping Repub­li­cans from claim­ing Mur­ray is vul­ner­a­ble, of course. They do it every six years. The usu­al series of events is:

  1. Top Sen­ate Repub­li­cans (e.g. Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott) and their oper­a­tives look for a can­di­date to chal­lenge Mur­ray who is either well known or has the poten­tial to raise a lot of mon­ey (or both), some­times using the lure of mak­ing Wash­ing­ton a tar­get­ed state.
  2. Once they have a can­di­date, Repub­li­cans try to get the “Mur­ray is vul­ner­a­ble” mantra going through sto­ry pitch­es to reporters, opin­ion columns from Repub­li­can pun­dits such as Hen­ry Olsen, FNC inter­views, and in more recent cycles, posts on social networks.
  3. Repub­li­can-aligned poll­sters spit out sur­veys sug­gest­ing that their can­di­date is close to Mur­ray, which every­one asso­ci­at­ed with the Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ra­tus waves around ad nauseum.
  4. Repub­li­can PCOs and arm­chair pun­dits start gid­di­ly pre­dict defeat for Mur­ray in every com­ment thread that they can find.
  5. Repub­li­cans spend a ton of mon­ey attack­ing Mur­ray on tele­vi­sion, on the radio, in print, and online, espe­cial­ly in the final weeks lead­ing up to the elec­tion, claim­ing she does­n’t do any­thing and has been there too long.
  6. Pat­ty Mur­ray wins reelec­tion to a six-year term despite all of that because Wash­ing­to­ni­ans pre­fer her rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Repub­li­can candidate.

Rinse and repeat. Every six years, it’s the same thing.

What’s espe­cial­ly hilar­i­ous are the right wing trolls who show up here and in oth­er places claim­ing that “lib­er­als are pan­ick­ing” about Mur­ray’s reelec­tion mere­ly because we’re com­ment­ing on the not-cred­i­ble polls and oth­er tac­tics Repub­li­cans are try­ing to use to goad Democ­rats into fret­ting about Mur­ray’s chances.

Our assess­ment remains the same as it was ear­li­er this year and last year: Pat­ty Mur­ray is well posi­tioned for reelec­tion. She earned an out­right major­i­ty of the vote last month against sev­en­teen chal­lengers, Smi­ley includ­ed, and ought to be able to repeat that feat in the com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. She is a sea­soned cam­paign­er who takes noth­ing for grant­ed and works hard.

Tiffany Smi­ley’s team have noticed this. They com­plain on a very reg­u­lar basis in emails to their list that they are being out­raised, that Mur­ray has the knives out for Smi­ley in her tele­vi­sion ads, and that this real­ly and tru­ly could be the end of the road if you, Friend, don’t donate right now to Smi­ley’s campaign.

No Repub­li­can has been elect­ed to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate in Wash­ing­ton State since the late Slade Gor­ton in 1994. Gor­ton, who decades lat­er smart­ly rec­og­nized Trump for the fraud that he is, would go on to lose to Maria Cantwell by few­er than 2,000 votes in the 2000 U.S. Sen­ate elec­tion, and become a lobbyist.

Not even the ven­er­a­ble Gor­ton was able to sur­vive Wash­ing­ton’s trans­for­ma­tion into a more reli­ably Demo­c­ra­t­ic state twen­ty-two years ago, yet Repub­li­cans want us to believe that this year, a Repub­li­can is going to get elect­ed to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate in Wash­ing­ton State… and not just any Repub­li­can, but an ultra MAGA can­di­date who oppos­es repro­duc­tive rights! While it’s true that pret­ty much any­thing is pos­si­ble in life and pol­i­tics, this is an improb­a­ble out­come, and no amount of polling cre­at­ed by Trafal­gar is going to make it probable.

Andrew Villeneuve

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