Poll Watch: Trafalgar tries to bolster Tiffany Smiley’s longshot challenge to Patty Murray

A right wing poll­ster claimed today that Wash­ing­ton’s 2022 con­test for Unit­ed States Sen­ate is “a sur­pris­ing­ly close race” based on a sin­gle find­ing from a sur­vey it con­duct­ed last week that dubi­ous­ly puts Repub­li­can Sen­ate hope­ful Tiffany Smi­ley with­in three points of Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Pat­ty Murray.

The sur­vey, by Trafal­gar Group, is uncor­rob­o­rat­ed by any oth­er pub­lic opin­ion research and is con­tra­dict­ed by the results of last mon­th’s Top Two, an actu­al elec­tion in which almost two mil­lion Wash­ing­to­ni­ans cast ballots.

Trafal­gar found Mur­ray at 49.2% and Smi­ley at 46.3%, with a mere 4.5% unde­cid­ed. The sam­ple con­sists of 1,087 like­ly gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers, inter­viewed from August 30th through yes­ter­day, Sep­tem­ber 1st.

Just half a month ago, in the ini­tial round of Wash­ing­ton’s two-part gen­er­al elec­tion, Mur­ray received 52.22% of the vote against Smi­ley and six­teen oth­er chal­lengers. Smi­ley, mean­while, received 33.69% of the vote.

The total vote received by can­di­dates iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves in some form or fash­ion as Repub­li­cans was 41.47%, while the total vote received by Mur­ray and oth­er can­di­dates iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as Democ­rats was 55.36%. That is typ­i­cal of the split we usu­al­ly see between groups of can­di­dates pro­fess­ing an affil­i­a­tion with the major par­ties in Wash­ing­ton State in a post-2016 Top Two election.

The sec­ond and final round will most like­ly con­sist of an elec­torate that is larg­er, more diverse, and more Demo­c­ra­t­ic, yet Trafal­gar would have us believe that Mur­ray is now crum­bling while Smi­ley is sud­den­ly soar­ing. There is no evi­dence what­so­ev­er to sup­port this con­tention. Trafal­gar­’s sur­vey is a clas­sic outlier.

As I say often here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the key to cred­i­ble, accu­rate polling is neu­tral ques­tions asked of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample.

Based on what Trafal­gar pub­lished, I have seri­ous doubts that their sam­ple is prop­er­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton Novem­ber electorate.

Remem­ber, the gap between Mur­ray and Smi­ley in the Top Two was over eigh­teen points, about in line with what the cred­i­ble pub­lic polling con­duct­ed in the pre­ced­ing month by Elway Research and Sur­veyUSA indi­cat­ed it could be.

This sur­vey puts Smi­ley’s lev­el of sup­port (46.3%) sev­er­al per­cent­age points above and beyond the per­cent­age that every Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­date com­bined got in the Top Two. Mur­ray, mean­while, is sup­pos­ed­ly under fifty per­cent despite hav­ing secured more than a major­i­ty of the vote against a field of sev­en­teen oppo­nents as of when the elec­tion was cer­ti­fied on August 16th.

Sor­ry, Trafal­gar, but that dog won’t hunt.

In the gen­er­al elec­tion, there will be no names on the bal­lot besides Smi­ley and Mur­ray. Our own most recent head-to-head poll find­ing, pub­lished at the begin­ning of June, found Mur­ray eleven points ahead of Smi­ley in a hypo­thet­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tion matchup. That was back in the spring, before Mur­ray launched her ads, before the gut­ting of Roe v. Wade, and before the Top Two.

Trafal­gar says on its method­ol­o­gy state­ment page that it con­ducts its sur­veys using live callers, inte­grat­ed voice response, text mes­sages, emails, and “two oth­er pro­pri­etary dig­i­tal meth­ods we don’t share pub­licly,” which is a red flag.

Sub­jec­tive orga­ni­za­tions are per­fect­ly capa­ble of car­ry­ing out objec­tive research, but it appears that Trafal­gar­’s goal here (giv­en their deci­sion to pub­lish these unsup­port­able fig­ures) is to bol­ster Smi­ley’s long­shot can­di­da­cy, rather than mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the body of cred­i­ble pub­lic opin­ion research in this race.