Democrats retain advantage on congressional generic ballot in WA as Election Day nears

A near major­i­ty of like­ly vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State say they are plan­ning to vote for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for Unit­ed States House in their con­gres­sion­al dis­trict as bal­lots land in mil­lions of mail­box­es for the 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est statewide poll has found.

49% of 782 respon­dents sur­veyed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for NPI from Octo­ber 19th-20th expressed a pref­er­ence for Democ­rats in U.S. House con­tests, while 40% expressed a pref­er­ence for Repub­li­cans. 11% were not sure.

The nine point advan­tage for Democ­rats is small­er than the twelve point lead we found in our last statewide poll in June, but it’s larg­er than the six point lead Democ­rats had on the con­gres­sion­al gener­ic bal­lot in our Feb­ru­ary 2022 poll.

A gener­ic bal­lot ques­tion is so named because it does­n’t men­tion spe­cif­ic can­di­dates. It’s a way of mea­sur­ing the strength of a par­ty’s brand across either a state (in the case of a statewide poll) or the Unit­ed States as a whole.

Most con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts aren’t drawn to be com­pet­i­tive, how­ev­er, and the in-dis­trict dynam­ics of those that are can dif­fer sub­stan­tial­ly from statewide dynam­ics, so the topline results of a gener­ic bal­lot ques­tion can’t be used to draw con­clu­sions about how indi­vid­ual can­di­dates may fare in bat­tle­ground districts.

Nev­er­the­less, this data sug­gests that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic brand in Wash­ing­ton State is in much bet­ter shape than it was in 2010, the last time the coun­try had a midterm cycle dur­ing the first term of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent. That year, Democ­rats were suf­fer­ing from what NPI’s state-lev­el poll­ster dubbed “a major enthu­si­asm gap.”

“Wash­ing­ton has one of the more severe enthu­si­asm gaps in the coun­try,” PPP’s Dean Deb­nam explained in a news release pub­lished on Novem­ber 1st, 2010. “Barack Oba­ma won the state by sev­en­teen points in 2008 but those plan­ning to vote this year sup­port­ed him by only a sev­en point margin.”

Democ­rats made a big push at the end of the 2010 cycle to close that gap and were able to save some of their crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered incum­bents. This year, Democ­rats begin the vot­ing peri­od in a far more advan­ta­geous position.

Here’s our ques­tion and the responses:

QUESTION: In the elec­tion for U.S. House, are you vot­ing for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic or Repub­li­can can­di­date from your district?

ANSWERS:

• Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date: 49% (-2% since June)
• Repub­li­can can­di­date: 40% (+1% since June)
• Not sure: 11% (+1% since June)

Our sur­vey of 782 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State midterm vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Octo­ber 19th through Thurs­day, Octo­ber 20th. The sur­vey was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

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

Wash­ing­ton State has a total of ten con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts. Six of them are con­sid­ered safe Demo­c­ra­t­ic and two are con­sid­ered safe Repub­li­can. A ninth dis­trict, WA-03 (South­west Wash­ing­ton) is clas­si­fied as “Lean Repub­li­can,” and the tenth, WA-08 (a cross-Cas­cades dis­trict) is clas­si­fied as a true tossup district.

To prop­er­ly gauge in-dis­trict dynam­ics, it’s impor­tant to poll at the con­gres­sion­al dis­trict lev­el — and NPI has been doing so, most recent­ly in WA-03 last month.

In that sur­vey, we found that Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Marie Glue­senkamp Perez is run­ning a com­pet­i­tive cam­paign for Con­gress against Joe Kent, an ultra MAGA Repub­li­can oppo­nent who has staked out extreme posi­tions on a num­ber of issues, includ­ing repro­duc­tive rights and the future of our democ­ra­cy. Glue­senkamp Perez and Kent pre­vailed over cur­rent U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler in the August Top Two elec­tion, putting an end to her reelec­tion bid.

To the north, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are locked in anoth­er pitched bat­tle in WA-08, a close­ly divid­ed dis­trict that sent Repub­li­cans to Con­gress for decades until Democ­rats flipped it in the last midterms with Dr. Kim Schrier.

Schri­er won reelec­tion in 2020 and is now seek­ing a third term. Schri­er’s Repub­li­can chal­lenger this year is extrem­ist Matt Larkin, who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2020. Larkin defeat­ed Rea­gan Dunn and Jesse Jensen in the Top Two elec­tion and now has the sup­port of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, the NRCC, and oth­er Repub­li­can groups for his candidacy.

A pletho­ra of attack ads blast­ing each of the can­di­dates (some of which are clear­ly cook­ie cut­ter pieces) are cur­rent­ly air­ing on tele­vi­sion sta­tions in the Seat­tle media mar­ket and are set to con­tin­ue through Novem­ber 8th.

With con­trol of the House on the line, the deci­sions that vot­ers in the 3rd and the 8th make this autumn will be huge­ly con­se­quen­tial not just for Wash­ing­ton and the Pacif­ic North­west, but the Unit­ed States as a whole.