In ten days, Wash­ing­ton State’s 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion will be cer­ti­fied and the final results of this year’s midterm elec­tions cycle will become available.

With the num­ber of bal­lots await­ing pro­cess­ing down to just 51,585 statewide and all major races called as of press time, it’s a good time to revis­it our poll find­ings and exam­ine to what extent they antic­i­pat­ed the out­comes in the actu­al returns tal­lied by elec­tions offi­cials. While polls can­not pre­dict how elec­tions will turn out, they can sug­gest what might hap­pen. This is a crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant dis­tinc­tion that we draw on a fre­quent basis here at NPI, as reg­u­lar read­ers know, espe­cial­ly in our poll find­ing analy­ses and our research polling retrospectives.

Over the past two years, NPI com­mis­sioned five statewide polls, all of which looked at our U.S. Sen­ate race and three of which looked at the spe­cial elec­tion for Sec­re­tary of State. We also com­mis­sioned two coun­ty­wide polls look­ing at the con­test for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor plus King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 (even-year elec­tions) and King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 (con­ser­va­tion futures levy).

Addi­tion­al­ly, we field­ed con­gres­sion­al polls in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd and 8th Districts.

Final­ly, our statewide polls asked vot­ers which par­ty’s tick­et they would sup­port for Con­gress and Leg­is­la­ture with­out nam­ing spe­cif­ic candidates.

Since we’re now at a junc­ture where we can prop­er­ly com­pare our elec­toral research to the increas­ing­ly com­plete unof­fi­cial results, let’s dive in and see how the returns align with our polling this cycle.

United States Senate, Washington

What our polling found: Every poll we com­mis­sioned of our state’s Unit­ed States Sen­ate race this cycle found Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Pat­ty Mur­ray com­fort­ably ahead of Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley. Mur­ray received at least 50% sup­port in each of our sur­veys and led by mar­gins of six­teen, thir­teen, nine, eleven, and ten points, respec­tive­ly. We assessed, repeat­ed­ly, that Mur­ray was well posi­tioned to win anoth­er term, even when Repub­li­can firms were putting out garbage data that false­ly showed a tied or extreme­ly close race.

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.

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Pat­ty Mur­ray is win­ning eas­i­ly. As of the time this post was writ­ten, Mur­ray had 57.23% of the vote statewide. Mur­ray’s Repub­li­can oppo­nent Tiffany Smi­ley had 42.55% of the vote.

Analy­sis: As we can see, our final poll nailed Smi­ley’s per­for­mance, find­ing her at 42% — and as men­tioned, Smi­ley has 42.55% of the vote. The poll also cor­rect­ly ascer­tained that Mur­ray was ahead by a com­fort­able dou­ble dig­it margin.

The 6% who were unde­cid­ed in our sur­vey came home to Mur­ray — if you add that group of unde­cid­ed vot­ers to Mur­ray’s 52%, you get 56%, which is close to the per­cent­age of the vote that Mur­ray actu­al­ly has in the election.

Mur­ray is win­ning every coun­ty in West­ern Wash­ing­ton except for Mason, Grays Har­bor, Pacif­ic, Lewis, Cowlitz, and Ska­ma­nia in South­west Washington.

Smi­ley is win­ning every coun­ty in Cen­tral and East­ern Washington.

Smi­ley is get­ting blown out in the state’s pop­u­lous heart of King Coun­ty, where near­ly three-fourths of vot­ers are back­ing Mur­ray’s reelection.

Our Octo­ber-Novem­ber King Coun­ty polling found that Mur­ray remained very pop­u­lar in King Coun­ty, indi­cat­ing that Tiffany Smi­ley’s ads had utter­ly failed to dent her sup­port among vot­ers in the state’s vital­ly impor­tant pop­u­la­tion cen­ter, which rep­re­sents a big slice of the total Seat­tle media market.

After we pub­lished our King Coun­ty find­ing, Repub­li­can oper­a­tive Alex Hays implied that our research should not be tak­en seri­ous­ly, snick­er­ing on Twit­ter: “It is a bit fun­ny the Seat­tle lib­er­als polled king coun­ty only for one of the two polls being used as proof.” (Hays is, or was, appar­ent­ly unaware that NPI is based in Red­mond and has exec­u­tive and board lead­er­ship that isn’t from Seattle.)

If Hays had tak­en our research seri­ous­ly, then he’d have been able to offer cogent analy­sis him­self. Instead, he relied on a ridicu­lous rat­ing from Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics and declared on-air to KIRO7 view­ers that the race was “fifty-fifty” when cred­i­ble polling said it def­i­nite­ly was­n’t, as you can see from watch­ing this story.

“I think we’re see­ing volatil­i­ty and I think we’re see­ing some tight­en­ing, and that’s not unusu­al com­ing down close to the wire,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist Crys­tal Fincher.

“I think we’re at 50–50, which is very sur­pris­ing to me. I had no expec­ta­tion of feel­ing that way even two weeks ago,” said Repub­li­can strate­gist Alex Hays.

Recent polls show­ing the race with­in a cou­ple of points come from right-lean­ing polling firms.

“It’s not that close. The race is cur­rent­ly nine to 12 points, give or take,” said Andrew Vil­leneuve of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. The insti­tute com­mis­sioned a poll last month that showed Mur­ray up 10 points.

He ques­tions the method­ol­o­gy of the most recent polls, and says they’re timed to moti­vate Repub­li­cans to feel they’re on the cusp of victory.

“That is the strat­e­gy, it’s a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. It’s all a psy­cho­log­i­cal game,” said Villeneuve.

Unlike oth­er research polling part­ner­ships, NPI and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (our statewide poll­ster) kept things con­sis­tent. Every one of our five polls this cycle was con­duct­ed using the same hybrid method­ol­o­gy and with the same uni­verse: like­ly Novem­ber 2022 vot­ers. We nev­er switched from reg­is­tered to like­ly vot­ers — we polled like­ly vot­ers only through the entire­ty of the cycle.

And each of the ques­tions under­pin­ning our U.S. Sen­ate find­ings were sim­ple head-to-head ques­tions, i.e. If the elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Pat­ty Mur­ray or Repub­li­can Tiffany Smi­ley?

The con­test has been described in recent media cov­er­age as “volatile,” “tight­en­ing,” or “tough” for Mur­ray. None of those descrip­tors are accurate.

Much of the polling in this race came at the end. NPI and PPP were the only research part­ner­ship to poll the con­test five times, and our polls were strate­gi­cal­ly spread out through the cycle at sea­son­al incre­ments (May of 2021, Novem­ber of 2021, Feb­ru­ary of 2022, June of 2022, and last month… Octo­ber of 2022).

As a con­se­quence, NPI has a gauge of where Mur­ray and Smi­ley were at every phase of the race. With Mur­ray hav­ing achieved 50% or bet­ter in every NPI sur­vey and Smi­ley always behind by at least nine to ten points, and with most of the elec­tion results now in hand show­ing this polling was spot on, we can say with con­fi­dence that Mur­ray was nev­er in any dan­ger of los­ing to Smiley.

Secretary of State

What our polling found: Our three statewide sur­veys this year sug­gest­ed a very flu­id and unset­tled con­test for Sec­re­tary of State. Here’s a summary:

• In our Feb­ru­ary poll, incum­bent Steve Hobbs had a nar­row lead over declared chal­lengers Kei­th Wag­oner (Repub­li­can) and Julie Ander­son (unaf­fil­i­at­ed) in a hypo­thet­i­cal three-way race.
• In our June poll, Hobbs had a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote against sev­en oppo­nents, Wag­oner and Ander­son includ­ed, with all of those oppo­nents in the sin­gle dig­its. The poll indi­cat­ed that any one of at least half of those sev­en chal­lengers could be Hobbs’ gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent. Ander­son was ulti­mate­ly able to get past all of the Repub­li­cans because the Repub­li­can vot­ers splin­tered, divid­ing into rough­ly equal pro­por­tions for Wag­oner and two oth­er Repub­li­cans: Mark Milos­cia and Bob Hagglund.
• In our Octo­ber poll, Hobbs and Ander­son were ini­tial­ly tied until we asked about write-in Repub­li­can can­di­date Brad Klip­pert. We found in a fol­low-up ques­tion that Klip­pert’s pres­ence in the race hurt Ander­son because her path to vic­to­ry required the sup­port of ultra MAGA vot­ers who were hap­py to write in the name of a true Repub­li­can once informed of that option.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s poll find­ing for Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State, Octo­ber 2022

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Hobbs won, aid­ed by Klip­pert’s write-in can­di­da­cy, just as our polling sug­gest­ed could hap­pen. Hobbs cur­rent­ly has 49.88% of the vote, Ander­son has 45.80%, and 4.31% of the vote is for a write-in can­di­date (pre­sum­ably, most of those are for Brad Klippert).

The cur­rent total num­ber of write-in votes is 125,310. That slight­ly exceeds Hobbs’ 11/18/2022 lead over Ander­son, an advan­tage of 118,536 votes.

Analy­sis: Last month, in our post announc­ing the Sec­re­tary of State find­ing, I not­ed: “Hobbs’ base of sup­port looks rather sol­id, while Anderson’s coali­tion looks awful­ly shaky. To win this con­test, Ander­son needs Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers behind her, since Wash­ing­ton is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic lean­ing state and most Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are back­ing Hobbs along with many independents.”

In a sub­se­quent pas­sage, I added: “If even a small per­cent­age of Repub­li­can vot­ers choose Klip­pert over Ander­son, her path to vic­to­ry could van­ish, putting the kibosh on Anderson’s chances.”

Had all those write-in vot­ers cho­sen Ander­son, Hobbs and Ander­son would be sep­a­rat­ed by just a few thou­sand votes out of mil­lions cast right now. Ander­son would be ahead. How­ev­er, over a hun­dred thou­sand most­ly Repub­li­can vot­ers grav­i­tat­ed to ultra MAGA can­di­date Brad Klip­pert’s write-in cam­paign, which was endorsed and pro­mot­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and its locals.

The dynam­ics of this con­test would undoubt­ed­ly have been very, very dif­fer­ent if Ander­son had run as a Demo­c­rat. By choos­ing to run as an unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date, she made it easy for the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers to ral­ly behind Steve Hobbs, and found her­self depen­dent on fick­le ultra MAGA Repub­li­can vot­ers for via­bil­i­ty in the gen­er­al elec­tion. That’s not a posi­tion a can­di­date com­mit­ted to the defense of democ­ra­cy should want to be in.

Congress, 8th Congressional District

What our polling found: We polled Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in an unre­leased sur­vey that field­ed in June of 2022 with Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, find­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Kim Schri­er with a three-point lead over Repub­li­can Matt Larkin in a hypo­thet­i­cal head-to-head gen­er­al elec­tion matchup. We also found Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers strong­ly unit­ed behind Schri­er for the Top Two. Schri­er received 47% in the sur­vey, while Larkin got 44%. 9% were not sure.

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Larkin, an unsuc­cess­ful can­di­date for Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2020, was able to edge fel­low Repub­li­cans Rea­gan Dunn and Jesse Jensen in the August Top Two elec­tion. He then faced Schri­er in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Schri­er is pre­vail­ing with 53.21% of the vote; Larkin has 46.46%.

Analy­sis: Kim Schri­er has now won three con­sec­u­tive com­pet­i­tive con­tests for Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, in two dif­fer­ent incar­na­tions (the 8th was redrawn late last year as part of the state’s 2021 redis­trict­ing exer­cise). Schri­er made the defense of repro­duc­tive rights a key theme of her cam­paign. She even released an ad on the same day as the Supreme Court’s Dobbs deci­sion was announced denounc­ing it as a trav­es­ty.

In Larkin, Schri­er had a first-rate foil: an out-of-touch, extreme ultra MAGA Repub­li­can who’d been caught on tape say­ing he was in align­ment with Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene and declar­ing that 2022 was­n’t a time for moderation.

Groups allied with Schri­er also seized on Lark­in’s sup­port for a nation­wide abor­tion ban with no excep­tions. Groups allied with Larkin tried to turn the tables with their own attack ads, but their efforts failed, and Schri­er improved on her 2020 per­for­mance against Jensen to cruise past Larkin to reelec­tion, reel­ing in around twice as many of the not sure vot­ers as Larkin.

Congress, 3rd Congressional District

What our polling found: We polled Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in Sep­tem­ber of 2022 with Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, find­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic hope­ful Marie Glue­senkamp Perez with­in three points of ultra MAGA Repub­li­can rival Joe Kent. In the final head-to-head ques­tion in our sur­vey, Kent received 47% and Glue­senkamp Perez received 44%. 9% said they were undecided.

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Glue­senkamp Perez nar­row­ly defeat­ed Kent in what the nation­al mass media has dubbed as one of the most stun­ning upsets this cycle. Glue­senkamp Perez cur­rent­ly has 50.17% of the vote, while Kent has 49.27%. Just 2,877 votes cur­rent­ly sep­a­rate the can­di­dates, with ten days until cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on Novem­ber 28th. Glue­senkamp Perez is the pro­ject­ed win­ner, with Ken­t’s momen­tum in late bal­lots hav­ing sput­tered out.

Analy­sis: Accord­ing to the FiveThir­tyEight aggre­ga­tor, NPI was the only orga­ni­za­tion to pub­licly and inde­pen­dent­ly poll Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict between the August Top Two elec­tion and the Novem­ber gen­er­al election.

Our research — cit­ed by The New York Times, Moth­er Jones, and Catholic News Agency — con­firmed that the Marie Glue­senkamp Perez cam­paign’s pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished inter­nal polling was accu­rate, and that Marie was run­ning a com­pet­i­tive cam­paign with the seri­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty of an upset. Post­mortems filed since the race was called for Glue­senkamp Perez, like this one, have used lan­guage sug­gest­ing “vir­tu­al­ly no one” saw Glue­senkamp Perez’s vic­to­ry coming.

But that’s actu­al­ly not true. The cam­paign’s polling and our inde­pen­dent polling showed Glue­senkamp Perez could win, and inspired many peo­ple to invest in the race, despite the DCC­C’s lack of inter­est in doing more than spectating.

In elec­toral polling, the mag­ic num­ber of fifty is more impor­tant than the mar­gin. If a favored can­di­date (in this case, Kent) is polling sev­er­al points below fifty, it’s a sure indi­ca­tor of trou­ble for that can­di­date. It was clear from our poll that Kent did­n’t have this con­test locked up. His high neg­a­tives and Marie’s relata­bil­i­ty cre­at­ed an open­ing for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry. MGP was able to win over Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers by demon­strat­ing that she was will­ing and ready to pro­vide the effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion the dis­trict deserved and needed.

The final para­graph of our analy­sis concluded:

“The 44% who back Glue­senkamp Perez seem com­mit­ted to her can­di­da­cy. The vast major­i­ty of vot­ers who say they’d vote for Kent also seem pret­ty com­mit­ted. That leaves the unde­cid­ed vot­ers. If Glue­senkamp Perez can win over enough of them, she can win this very unusu­al con­test. It won’t be easy… but a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry in WA-03 this cycle is an achiev­able objec­tive.”

Objec­tive achieved!

King County Prosecuting Attorney

What our polling found: We polled the 2022 King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney con­test twice: once in the sum­mer and again in the autumn, the week before Elec­tion Day. In the sum­mer, we found rivals Leesa Man­ion and Jim Fer­rell tied ini­tial­ly, but Man­ion’s bio­graph­i­cal high­lights res­onat­ed more with “not sure” respon­dents than Fer­rel­l’s. In the autumn, we found Man­ion and Fer­rell about tied again — how­ev­er, Man­ion led among those respon­dents who had already vot­ed.

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

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Leesa Man­ion eas­i­ly defeat­ed Jim Fer­rell and will become King Coun­ty’s next Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, suc­ceed­ing Dan Sat­ter­berg. Man­ion has 57.58% of the vote as of press time, and Fer­rell had 41.97%.

Analy­sis: The posi­tion of King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney is “non­par­ti­san,” which means the can­di­dates’ names appear on the bal­lot with no par­ty labels. “Non­par­ti­san” races are tougher to poll because there tends to be a lot more unde­cid­ed vot­ers than in par­ti­san races.

We knew this going in, and designed sur­veys that asked more than just a sim­ple “who are you vot­ing for” horser­ace ques­tion. The fol­low-up ques­tion we asked in the sum­mer, for instance, showed that vot­ers grav­i­tat­ed to Man­ion over Fer­rell when they learned about the can­di­dates’ backgrounds.

That was evi­dence that Man­ion was the stronger can­di­date of the two, with a greater appeal among vot­ers, much to Fer­rel­l’s annoy­ance and dis­plea­sure.

Although the can­di­dates were essen­tial­ly tied in the autumn aggre­gate find­ing, Man­ion’s vic­to­ry was once again fore­shad­owed with­in our data.

Cru­cial­ly, she held a lead among those vot­ers who had already vot­ed, where­as Fer­rel­l’s advan­tage was with those who were plan­ning to vote. And that was­n’t the only “tell”: Man­ion also led among not sure vot­ers who respond­ed to a fol­low-up prompt to pick a con­tender (24% to Fer­rel­l’s 19%) after being shown infor­ma­tion from the can­di­dates’ vot­ers pam­phlet statements.

33% of the respon­dents who had already vot­ed said could­n’t recall who they had vot­ed for in the Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney race, which impact­ed the topline results. Many those vot­ers may have picked Man­ion but then could­n’t remem­ber their deci­sion. Man­ion’s strength in Seat­tle and North Lake Wash­ing­ton / East­side precincts, some­thing we saw in the pol­l’s crosstabs, was cru­cial to her suc­cess. As you can see from the chart below of elec­tion night precinct lev­el data, Man­ion was very com­pet­i­tive on the East­side and cruised in Seattle:

Visu­al­iza­tion of elec­tion night precinct lev­el data in King Coun­ty for Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, 2022 (Click to enlarge, with thanks to Jason Weill)

Fer­rell dom­i­nat­ed in South King Coun­ty and in rur­al King Coun­ty, but ulti­mate­ly could not make this coun­ty­wide race competitive.

King County Charter Amendment 1

What our polling found: We first researched sup­port for King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 (the first-ever NPI con­ceived bal­lot mea­sure to appear before vot­ers!) in the sum­mer. Ini­tial­ly, 55% of respon­dents favored the mea­sure, and 16% were opposed, with 28% not sure. After hear­ing a bal­anced set of argu­ments for and against, sup­port rose to 68% and oppo­si­tion to 27%, with only 5% not sure. Our autumn sur­vey like­wise found King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 ahead, with 50% sup­port, 21% oppo­si­tion, and 16% not sure. Sup­port among vot­ers who had already cast bal­lots in the elec­tion was high­er, at 58%.

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 is pass­ing over­whelm­ing­ly, with 69.46% in favor. More than half a mil­lion King Coun­ty vot­ers are say­ing yes to our pro­pos­al to make future elec­tions for King Coun­ty offices more inclu­sive. The amend­ment will soon go into effect. Imple­men­ta­tion (the switch to even years!) will be com­plete as of the 2028 pres­i­den­tial election.

Analy­sis: We have long con­tend­ed that even-year elec­tions are pop­u­lar, and the results of King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 prove it. Aside from Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn and right wing talk show Jason Rantz, who made a few crit­i­cal com­ments at a few dif­fer­ent junc­tures, we cam­paigned with no oppo­si­tion at all. No one wrote a state­ment oppos­ing our pro­pos­al in the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment and no one orga­nized a com­mit­tee to defeat Char­ter Amend­ment 1.

The high sup­port we found in our final bal­lot title test in the sum­mer showed that a ful­ly informed rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of like­ly vot­ers was extreme­ly enthu­si­as­tic about even-year elec­tions. We saw that same enthu­si­asm in the actu­al vote.

A 69% yes vote is more than a land­slide, it’s a vic­to­ry of enor­mous pro­por­tions. More than two-thirds of vot­ers in one of the nation’s most pop­u­lous coun­ties have deliv­ered an unam­bigu­ous mes­sage: yes, elect­ing local posi­tions in years when turnout is high­er and more diverse is some­thing that we want!

King County Proposition 1

What our polling found: King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1, the con­ser­va­tion futures levy, got off to a good start back in the sum­mer, with 64% sup­port­ive, 25% opposed, and 11% not sure. In the autumn, sup­port remained robust, with 57% in favor in the aggre­gate, 27% opposed, and 7% not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s Octo­ber-Novem­ber 2022 poll find­ing on King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, con­cern­ing conservation

What hap­pened in the elec­tion: Vot­ers are pass­ing King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1. It’s receiv­ing a sim­i­lar per­cent­age to Char­ter Amend­ment 1: 69.94%. That’s real­ly impres­sive. Even at a time of ris­ing infla­tion, King Coun­ty vot­ers showed they val­ue con­ser­va­tion and want to pro­tect our lands for future gen­er­a­tions to enjoy!

Analy­sis: Levies have his­tor­i­cal­ly had a good track record of pas­sage in King Coun­ty, which uses them to ensure its local pub­lic ser­vices are not choked by schemes such as Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 747, which arti­fi­cial­ly restricts prop­er­ty tax­es. The con­ser­va­tion futures levy was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of an elec­torate with the vision and good sense to under­stand that our pub­lic and com­mu­ni­ty-man­aged lands are one of our great­est assets as a coun­ty. Pro­tect­ing and adding green spaces strength­ens our qual­i­ty of life and ben­e­fits everyone.

Final thoughts

As in past cycles, this year’s elec­tion returns have val­i­dat­ed our research… just like in 2018 when our polling found Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell well ahead of Repub­li­can chal­lenger Susan Hutchi­son, or in 2020 when our polling cor­rect­ly fore­shad­owed the out­come of every statewide can­di­date elec­tion, or in 2021 when we nailed the dynam­ics of every city­wide con­test in Seattle.

The rea­son this keeps hap­pen­ing is sim­ple: we’re total­ly com­mit­ted to the sci­en­tif­ic method, where­as Repub­li­can firms like Trafal­gar or Moore are not.

Sub­jec­tive orga­ni­za­tions are entire­ly capa­ble of con­duct­ing objec­tive research, but it requires an abid­ing com­mit­ment to ask­ing neu­tral ques­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples. Alex Hays and oth­er Repub­li­cans are free to put their faith in those firms or in aggre­ga­tors like Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics rather than our research if they want, but if they do, they run the risk of being mis­in­formed about what’s actu­al­ly going on.

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