2022 polling retrospective featured image

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
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.
Secretary of State poll finding (October 2022)
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
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:

King County Prosecuting Attorney Election Night Returns
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.

King County Conservation Future Levy poll finding visualization
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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About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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