With less than a week to go until Elec­tion Day, King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney hope­fuls Leesa Man­ion and Jim Fer­rell are run­ning about even in the con­test to select a new chief law enforce­ment offi­cer for Wash­ing­ton State’s largest local juris­dic­tion, a new North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute poll has found.

32% of a large sam­ple of like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty vot­ers sur­veyed online this week for NPI by Change Research said they had vot­ed or were plan­ning to vote for Leesa Man­ion, the chief of staff to cur­rent Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Sat­ter­berg, while 31% said they had vot­ed or were plan­ning to vote for Jim Fer­rell, the May­or of Fed­er­al Way, who is also seek­ing the office.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s Octo­ber 2022 King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney poll finding

In the aggre­gate, 3% did not vote in the con­test, 19% did not recall how they had vot­ed, 14% were not sure, and 2% said they would not vote on this position.

Man­ion has a six point lead among those who have already vot­ed, while Fer­rell ini­tial­ly has a nine point lead among those who have not yet voted.

A major­i­ty of the not sure vot­ers (50%) remain unsure who they are vot­ing for even after review­ing infor­ma­tion about the can­di­dates from the voter’s pam­phlet. 24% of them back Man­ion, 19% back Fer­rell, and 2% said they would not vote.

These results sug­gest that this impor­tant down­bal­lot race could go either way. It’s extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive. When we first sur­veyed it back in the sum­mer, we like­wise found the can­di­dates ini­tial­ly tied at 8% each, with a whop­ping 83% unde­cid­ed.

Few­er vot­ers are now unde­cid­ed, but this lat­est poll sug­gests Man­ion and Fer­rell are still close to each oth­er. Notably, a third of the vot­ers who had already vot­ed said they could not recall who they had sup­port­ed, which makes that part of the dataset more incom­plete than our team would like.

Here’s the exact ques­tions we asked and the respons­es we received:

Already voted

QUESTION: In the elec­tion for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, who did you vote for?

Respon­dents who told us that they had already vot­ed were shown this question. 

• Jim Fer­rell: 28%
• Leesa Man­ion: 34%
• Did not vote on this: 5%
• Do not recall: 33%

Haven’t yet voted

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney are list­ed below in the order they appear on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. Who are you vot­ing for?

Respon­dents who told us that they had not yet vot­ed were shown this question. 

• Jim Fer­rell: 25%
• Leesa Man­ion: 16%
• Not sure: 60%

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION ASKED OF UNDECIDED VOTERS ONLY: Here are bio­graph­i­cal details about each of the can­di­dates along with a link to their com­plete state­ments in the voter’s pamphlet.

About Jim Ferrell
Edu­ca­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton — Bach­e­lor of Arts; Gon­za­ga Uni­ver­si­ty – Law Degree
Occu­pa­tion: May­or of Fed­er­al Way; for­mer King Coun­ty Senior Deputy Prosecutor

About Leesa Manion
Edu­ca­tion: JD Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law; BA, North­ern Ken­tucky University
Occu­pa­tion: 27 years Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor; 15 years Prosecutor’s Chief of Staff

Read the full can­di­date state­ments for Jim Fer­rell and Leesa Man­ion that were pub­lished by King Coun­ty Elec­tions at this kingcounty.gov link.

If you had to choose, who would you vote for?

• Jim Fer­rell: 19%
• Leesa Man­ion: 24%
• Not sure: 50%
• Would not vote: 7%

Aggregate responses

COMBINED ANSWERS (AGGREGATE), ALL QUESTIONS:

• Jim Fer­rell: 31%
• Leesa Man­ion: 32%
• Did not vote on this: 3%
• Don’t recall: 19%
• Not sure: 14%
• Would not vote: 2%

Jim Fer­rel­l’s name was always shown to respon­dents first and Leesa Man­ion’s name was always shown sec­ond, as that is the order the can­di­dates are list­ed on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. The can­di­dates’ pho­tographs from the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment were shown to vot­ers along­side their names.

Our sur­vey of 740 like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers was in the field from Fri­day, Octo­ber 28th until today, Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3rd.

The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research and 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.

A few insights from the crosstabs:

• Female vot­ers pre­fer Man­ion to a slight extent and male vot­ers pre­fer Fer­rell to a slight extent. In the aggre­gate, 35% of vot­ers iden­ti­fy­ing as women backed Man­ion while 29% backed Fer­rell. 33% of vot­ers iden­ti­fy­ing as men backed Fer­rell while 28% backed Manion.
• Man­ion does bet­ter with col­lege edu­cat­ed vot­ers in the aggre­gate (36% to Fer­rel­l’s 30%) while Fer­rell does bet­ter with non-col­lege vot­ers in the aggre­gate (33% to Man­ion’s 26%).
• Man­ion has a four point lead (32% to 28%) with white vot­ers in the aggre­gate, while vot­ers of col­or are split in the aggre­gate between the two can­di­dates (34% for Fer­rell, 33% for Manion)
• Fer­rell has an advan­tage with Asian Amer­i­can Pacif­ic Islander vot­ers. 37% of them back Fer­rell in the aggre­gate, while 29% back Manion.
• The youngest vot­ers pre­fer Man­ion by a two-to-one mar­gin. In the aggre­gate, 41% of those ages eigh­teen to thir­ty-four expressed a pref­er­ence for Man­ion and 20% expressed a pref­er­ence for Ferrell.
• Old­er vot­ers pre­fer Fer­rell. In the aggre­gate, Fer­rell has a ten point lead over Man­ion with vot­ers over the age of six­ty-five (37% to Man­ion’s 27%) and an eleven point lead among vot­ers ages fifty to six­ty-four (38% to Man­ion’s 27%). Old­er vot­ers who had already vot­ed said they did not recall who they had vot­ed for in greater num­bers than younger voters.
• Man­ion has a slight edge with vot­ers ages thir­ty-five to forty-nine. In the aggre­gate, 31% of them back her and 29% pre­fer Ferrell.
• Man­ion is favored by 39% of Biden vot­ers in the aggre­gate, while Fer­rell is favored by 24% of Biden vot­ers. Fer­rell has the edge with Trump vot­ers in the aggre­gate: 51% of them pre­fer him and just 10% back Manion.

Final­ly, with respect to geog­ra­phy, Man­ion leads in Seat­tle and on the East­side plus Seat­tle’s north­ern sub­urbs; Fer­rell leads in South King Coun­ty and in the rur­al por­tion of the coun­ty. Here are those numbers:

• Seat­tle
  • Fer­rell: 27%
  • Man­ion: 35%
• East­side and North Lake Washington
  • Fer­rell: 26%
  • Man­ion: 30%
• South King County
  • Fer­rell: 40%
  • Man­ion: 30%
• Rur­al King County
  • Fer­rell: 32%
  • Man­ion: 26%

Fer­rel­l’s strongest region is South King Coun­ty, where he’s from; Man­ion’s strongest region is Seat­tle, the most lib­er­al part of the county.

Man­ion has raised $377,374.40 for her cam­paign and spent $349,245.25; Fer­rell has raised $397,632.43 and spent $367,057.21.

Man­ion is sup­port­ed by the King Coun­ty Democ­rats, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, and out­go­ing Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Satterberg.

You can see a longer list of Man­ion’s endorse­ments here.

Fer­rell is endorsed by U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith, sub­ur­ban may­ors like Ren­ton’s Armon­do Pavone, and a num­ber of police offi­cers’ unions.

You can see a longer list of Fer­rel­l’s endorse­ments here.

The Seat­tle Times has enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorsed Fer­rell; The Stranger has enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorsed Manion.

Fer­rell has pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cized NPI’s research. In an appear­ance on Jason Rantz’s right wing talk radio show in August, he false­ly char­ac­ter­ized our pre­vi­ous poll find­ing as a “push poll.” This dis­hon­esty was extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing and trou­bling to our team. We work very hard to ask neu­tral ques­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples and fol­low the sci­en­tif­ic method in our polling.

Fer­rel­l’s false char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of our research was unbe­com­ing of a can­di­date seek­ing a posi­tion of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly one as impor­tant as this.

For those who are not reg­u­lar read­ers or sup­port­ers of our work, it’s impor­tant to know that the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute does not endorse can­di­dates, or engage in elec­tion­eer­ing for or against any can­di­date. We are not aligned with either of these Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney hope­fuls. We did not test any neg­a­tive mes­sages about either can­di­date in this sur­vey; the only infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to respon­dents about them were the can­di­dates’ voter’s pam­phlet statements.

This con­test did not appear on the August Top Two bal­lot (because only two can­di­dates filed) and there has been no oth­er pub­lic polling of it besides our pre­vi­ous sur­vey in July-August, which is avail­able here.

At NPI, we spe­cial­ize in ask­ing ques­tions that no one else is ask­ing. We are very hap­py to be able to pub­lish this find­ing today as a pub­lic ser­vice to the peo­ple of King Coun­ty. If you appre­ci­ate our research and want it to con­tin­ue, we invite you to become a mem­ber of NPI or make a one-time dona­tion.