Vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State appear poised to once again return vet­er­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Pat­ty Mur­ray to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, a statewide sur­vey con­duct­ed this week for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute confirms.

Asked about their pref­er­ences in this year’s Sen­ate race from Octo­ber 19th-20th, 52% of 782 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers said they planned to vote for Mur­ray. 42% said they planned to vote for Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smiley.

6% were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s Octo­ber 2022 U.S. Sen­ate poll find­ing. The box­es with the per­cent­age changes refer to the dif­fer­ence in the fig­ures from NPI’s last statewide poll in June of 2022.

This find­ing demon­strates that Mur­ray con­tin­ues to enjoy a dou­ble dig­it lead over Smi­ley despite a recent tor­rent of ads from Smi­ley’s cam­paign false­ly denounc­ing her as a do-noth­ing sen­a­tor who has­n’t accom­plished any­thing — a ridicu­lous char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that drew a rebuke from The Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board.

Mur­ray earned 52% of the vote in the Top Two elec­tion in August, while Smi­ley received 33.69%. The com­bined field of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates received a total of 55.36% and the com­bined field of Repub­li­cans received 41.47%.

In addi­tion to earn­ing an out­right major­i­ty in the first round of Wash­ing­ton’s two-part gen­er­al elec­tion, Mur­ray has con­sis­tent­ly received sup­port of fifty per­cent or greater in every sur­vey that we’ve com­mis­sioned this cycle.

Oth­er recent polls that have field­ed since Labor Day have also found Mur­ray ahead of Smi­ley by dou­ble dig­its, includ­ing one con­duct­ed by Elway/Crosscut, one con­duct­ed by KOMO/Strategies 360, and one con­duct­ed by our own poll­ster Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for anoth­er client. A poll con­duct­ed by Emer­son Col­lege had Mur­ray ahead by nine points, just shy of a dou­ble dig­it threshold.

Lack­ing evi­dence that Smi­ley is a seri­ous threat to Mur­ray, Repub­li­can oper­a­tives in August com­mis­sioned their poll­sters (notably the Trafal­gar Group) to gen­er­ate num­bers show­ing that Smi­ley is com­pet­i­tive. Trafal­gar pro­ceed­ed to pro­duce two sur­veys claim­ing Smi­ley was right behind Mur­ray, which were then prompt­ly con­tra­dict­ed by cred­i­ble polls from the firms men­tioned in the para­graph above.

Since Mur­ray already has major­i­ty sup­port, there real­ly isn’t an open­ing for Smi­ley in this con­test. Even if all the unde­cid­ed vot­ers end­ed up in her camp — which they prob­a­bly won’t — Mur­ray would still win reelection.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for Unit­ed States Sen­ate in Wash­ing­ton State are Demo­c­rat Pat­ty Mur­ray and Repub­li­can Tiffany Smi­ley. Who do you plan to vote for in the election?

ANSWERS:

• Pat­ty Mur­ray (D): 52% (+1% since June)
• Tiffany Smi­ley (R): 42% (+2% since June)
• Not sure: 6% (-2% 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.

The inter­ac­tive chart below shows the trend over the course of the cycle. As we can see, Mur­ray has received major­i­ty sup­port in every sin­gle one of our polls.

Previous U.S. Senate poll finding analyses

• May of 2021
• Novem­ber of 2021
• Feb­ru­ary of 2022
• June of 2022

That mag­ic num­ber of fifty is what anoth­er one of our poll­sters (Change Research of Cal­i­for­nia) says you should pay atten­tion to when eval­u­at­ing elec­toral polls.

“Ignore polling mar­gins,” the firm advised in a recent newslet­ter. “For any race, think about the mag­ic num­ber: 50. If one can­di­date is polling around 50 per­cent and the oth­er isn’t, you can have more con­fi­dence in the outcome.”

“In U.S. Sen­ate and pres­i­den­tial polling from 2014 to 2020, Democ­rats won all 18 races where they polled at 49 per­cent or high­er. Democ­rats who polled at 48 per­cent won 63 per­cent of the time. How­ev­er, only 19 per­cent of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates polling between 45 per­cent and 47 per­cent went on to win, and Democ­rats have lost every race where they polled under 45 percent.”

Here, we have one can­di­date polling above fifty per­cent (Mur­ray) and one who isn’t (Smi­ley). Mur­ray has a track record of win­ning even against can­di­dates Repub­li­cans have repeat­ed­ly and loud­ly insist­ed would take her down in cycles past, like Lin­da Smith, George Nether­cutt, and Dino Rossi.

We see no evi­dence that Smi­ley is posi­tioned to jeop­ar­dize that win­ning streak. Our assess­ment remains unchanged: Pat­ty Mur­ray is on track for reelection.

This isn’t 2010, when Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling found Rossi com­pet­i­tive with Mur­ray up until right before Elec­tion Day. It’s 2022. We are in a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal age… an age in which Democ­rats have a much more durable advan­tage in the sub­urbs and exurbs thanks in part to the polit­i­cal realign­ment spurred by sociopath Don­ald Trump’s fright­en­ing and con­se­quen­tial 2016 Elec­toral Col­lege victory.