As we bid adieu to 2022 and wel­come in a new year, it’s the per­fect time to look back at the most pop­u­lar Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate posts of 2022.

Here’s the top twen­ty most read posts from the past three hun­dred and six­ty-four days, in descend­ing order. Note that two were pub­lished in years pre­ced­ing 2022.

#20 | Steve Hobbs leads crowded field for Secretary of State (WA), with most voters undecided 

Post premise/summary:

While a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of vot­ers (56%) said they were unsure, which was unsur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of choic­es in the ques­tion, Hobbs was the clear leader among those who did offer an opin­ion, with 17% say­ing they would vote for him. No oth­er can­di­date received sup­port beyond 6%.

Pub­lished June 3rd, 2022

#19 | Jaime Herrera Beutler courts Democratic voters as 2022 Top Two election draws near

Post premise/summary:

The thir­ty-sec­ond tele­vi­sion spot being deployed by six-term Repub­li­can Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler echoes themes repeat­ed­ly used by Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates to spot­light health care costs, an issue which the Democ­rats in this state have owned since the 1990s.

Pub­lished June 7th, 2022

#18 | Move Ahead Washington transportation package gets final legislative approval 

Post premise/summary:

The pack­age’s rev­enue bill passed 54–54 in the House and 29–20 in the Sen­ate, while its appro­pri­a­tions bill passed 57–41 in the House and 30–19 in the Senate.

Pub­lished March 10th, 2022

#17 | President Joe Biden returning to the PNW for Earth Day, will stop in Portland and Seattle

Post premise/summary:

This will be Biden’s first trip to Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon as Pres­i­dent. Biden has already been to Ida­ho as Pres­i­dent, stop­ping in Boise for a vis­it as part of anoth­er trip out west that he took last year. Biden was most recent­ly in Seat­tle in 2019 dur­ing a pre-pan­dem­ic fundrais­ing swing as part of his pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Pub­lished April 15th, 2022

#16 | Leesa Manion, Jim Ferrell tied in the 2022 contest for King County Prosecuting Attorney

Post premise/summary:

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.

Pub­lished Novem­ber 3rd, 2022

#15 | February 2022 King County school levies are passing, except for one Riverview levy

Post premise/summary:

Ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2022 spe­cial elec­tion results are in here in Wash­ing­ton State’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty, and they look good for schools and essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices almost across the board, with only a cou­ple of exceptions.

Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 8th, 2022

#14 | Patty Murray’s double digit lead over Tiffany Smiley continues as October voting begins

Post premise/summary:

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.

Pub­lished Octo­ber 21st, 2022

#13 | Democratic small business owner Marie Perez to challenge Jaime Herrera Beutler in WA-03

Post premise/summary:

“For too long, res­i­dents of South­west Wash­ing­ton have been ignored by politi­cians in both par­ties who are more inter­est­ed in cater­ing to extremes than help­ing work­ing peo­ple,” said Perez in a state­ment declar­ing her candidacy.

Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 23rd, 2022

#12 | Poll Watch: KOMO/Strategies 360 confirms Patty Murray has double digit lead; Hobbs and Anderson tied for Secretary of State

Post premise/summary:

Wash­ing­ton’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray con­tin­ues to enjoy a dou­ble dig­it lead over Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley, while Sec­re­tary of State hope­fuls Steve Hobbs and Julie Ander­son are tied at 38% apiece with less than a month until the midterms, a new poll from Strate­gies 360 and KOMO has found.

Pub­lished Octo­ber 10th, 2022

#11 | Leesa Manion, Jim Ferrell tied at outset of King County Prosecuting Attorney contest, but Manion’s bio wins among the undecided

Post premise/summary:

Ini­tial­ly, 83% of like­ly 2022 vot­ers sur­veyed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute said they were not sure who they’d sup­port, with only 8% back­ing each can­di­date. How­ev­er, Leesa Man­ion jumped out to a lead over Jim Fer­rell after “not sure” vot­ers were pro­vid­ed bio­graph­i­cal high­lights of both.

Pub­lished August 1st, 2022

#10 | Documentary Review: “Saving Capitalism” highlights an important truth about markets

Post premise/summary:

Read NPI’s review of for­mer Sec­re­tary of Labor Robert Reich’s new film about what hap­pened to our econ­o­my, now avail­able to stream on Netflix.

Pub­lished Decem­ber 16th, 2017

#9 | Washington State Senate passes two critically important gun safety bills in evening session

Post premise/summary:

A pair of extreme­ly impor­tant, much need­ed gun safe­ty bills pre­vi­ous­ly approved by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives each received con­sti­tu­tion­al majori­ties in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate on March 1st, 2022 and are one step clos­er to becom­ing laws.

Pub­lished March 1st, 2022

#8 | Extremism Watch: Sinclair’s Jonathan Choe serves up lots of publicity for the Proud Boys

Post premise/summary:

Choe calls him­self a jour­nal­ist — he even empha­sizes that label as part of his Twit­ter han­dle — but he rarely seems to prac­tice what the Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sion­al Jour­nal­ists defines in their code of ethics as jour­nal­ism. On March 19th, he pret­ty much dropped any pre­tense of being a jour­nal­ist and instead chose to act as a press agent for the Proud Boys dur­ing his after­noon in Olympia.

Pub­lished March 20th, 2022

#7 | Poll Watch: Trafalgar tries to bolster Tiffany Smiley’s longshot challenge to Patty Murray

Post premise/summary:

Sub­jec­tive orga­ni­za­tions are per­fect­ly capa­ble of car­ry­ing out objec­tive research, but it appears that Trafal­gar­’s goal here (giv­en their deci­sion to pub­lish these unsup­port­able fig­ures) is to bol­ster Smi­ley’s long­shot can­di­da­cy, rather than mak­ing a cred­i­ble con­tri­bu­tion to the body of pub­lic opin­ion research in this race.

Pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 2nd, 2022

#6 | A close contest in WA-03: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez narrowly trails Joe Kent, NPI poll finds

Post premise/summary:

Only three per­cent­age points sep­a­rat­ed the can­di­dates in the sur­vey’s final head-to-head matchup, with Kent gar­ner­ing 47% and Glue­senkamp Perez 44%. 9% are not sure. Those fig­ures are almost iden­ti­cal to respons­es to the ini­tial head-to-head ques­tion, in which Kent got 48% and Glue­senkamp Perez got 44%.

Pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 21st, 2022

#5 | Martin Luther King, Jr.: We have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws

Post premise/summary:

Take a few moments to read this excerpt from Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s Let­ter From Birm­ing­ham Jail.

Pub­lished Jan­u­ary 18th, 2016

#4 | Washington’s once sleepy special election for Secretary of State is now on the media’s radar

Post premise/summary:

In the 2022 Top Two elec­tion, incum­bent Steve Hobbs faces three Repub­li­cans — Kei­th Wag­oner, Mark Milos­cia, and Bob Hag­glu­nd, along with Pierce Coun­ty Audi­tor Julie Ander­son, who is run­ning as an inde­pen­dent, plus a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, Tam­borine Bor­rel­li, an unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date named Kur­tis Engle, and one oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, Mar­quez Tig­gs, who is run­ning with­out mon­ey or par­ty support.

Pub­lished July 30th, 2022

#3 | Senator Patty Murray regains double digit lead over Republican opponent Tiffany Smiley

Post premise/summary:

51% of 1,039 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers said they would vote for Mur­ray if the elec­tion were being held today, while 40% said they would vote for Smi­ley, Mur­ray’s like­ly gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent. 8% were not sure.

Pub­lished June 2nd, 2022

#2 | Documentary Review: Robert Reich’s “Inequality for All” is an essential film

Post premise/summary:

Read NPI’s review of Inequal­i­ty For All, a film based on the work of pro­gres­sive thought leader and for­mer Sec­re­tary of Labor Robert Reich.

Pub­lished April 13th, 2019

#1 | 2022 U.S. Senate race tightens: Patty Murray holds steady as Tiffany Smiley gains ground

Post premise/summary:

50% of 700 like­ly 2022 vot­ers sur­veyed in mid-Feb­ru­ary 2022 by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for NPI said they would vote for Mur­ray if the elec­tion were being held today, while 41% said they would vote for Smi­ley. 9% were not sure.

Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 18th, 2022

Honorable mention

This post was­n’t one of the twen­ty most-read, but it is prob­a­bly my favorite:

Why the 2022 midterms in Wash­ing­ton State could look more like 2018 than 2010 or 2014

In this in-depth post for The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, NPI’s founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor dis­cuss­es how Repub­li­cans are work­ing suc­cess­ful­ly to push reporters and poll­sters to view the midterms on their terms and cri­tiques Stu­art Elway’s recent Wash­ing­ton State polling.

Pub­lished Jan­u­ary 28th, 2022

NPI’s statewide and coun­ty­wide elec­toral research was very pop­u­lar with read­ers. Pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished reviews of Robert Reich doc­u­men­tary films were also a hit, along with our cov­er­age of the con­test in the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict between Marie Glue­senkamp Perez and Joe Kent. (Glue­senkamp Perez won, in what was called the upset of the year, but which was fore­shad­owed by cred­i­ble polling).

Thanks to every­one who read the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate this year. See you in 2023!