Pres­i­dent Joe Biden enjoys a sev­en­teen point lead in Wash­ing­ton State for anoth­er term over his indict­ed pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump and a some­what small­er twelve point lead over right wing Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent statewide sur­vey has found.

If the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion were being held today, 53% of 773 like­ly Wash­ing­ton State gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers inter­viewed last week by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI say they’d sup­port Biden’s reelec­tion if the can­di­dates were Biden and Trump. 36%, mean­while, would vote for Trump. 11% said they weren’t sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s June 2023 pres­i­den­tial poll find­ing, which asked Wash­ing­ton State respon­dents about two pos­si­ble 2024 pres­i­den­tial matchups (North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute)

DeSan­tis is, at least at this junc­ture, is a slight­ly stronger can­di­date than Trump for the Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton State. In a hypo­thet­i­cal matchup with the ultra MAGA Flori­da gov­er­nor, once a pro­tege of Trump’s, 51% of our respon­dents said they’d vote for Biden, while 39% would vote for DeSan­tis. 10% were not sure.

There are no cer­tain­ties in pol­i­tics, but pun­dits would say it’s a giv­en that Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will car­ry Wash­ing­ton in 2024. The state isn’t expect­ed to be com­pet­i­tive, and this polling sup­ports that view. How­ev­er, who’s at the top of the tick­et mat­ters, and can have an effect on races far down the ballot.

DeSan­tis might not be a boon for Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans if he’s the nom­i­nee, but per­haps he would­n’t weigh down the tick­et as much as Trump would.

It’s been said that all pol­i­tics is local and all pol­i­tics is nation­al; it’s also been said in recent years that all pol­i­tics is Trump. And all of those phe­nom­e­na can actu­al­ly be true simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Our polit­i­cal land­scape abounds with paradoxes!

Here’s the exact text of the ques­tions we asked and the responses:

QUESTION: If the 2024 elec­tion for Pres­i­dent were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS:

• Joe Biden: 53%
• Don­ald Trump: 36%
• Not sure: 11%

QUESTION: If the 2024 elec­tion for Pres­i­dent were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Ron DeSantis?

• Joe Biden: 51%
• Ron DeSan­tis: 39%
• Not sure: 10%

Our sur­vey of 773 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, June 7th through Thurs­day, June 8th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (41%) and online answers from cell phone only respon­dents (59%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

The historical record

39% is a smidgeon high­er than where Trump-Pence tick­et per­formed in 2016 and 2020, and 36% is two ticks low­er. In 2016, the Trump-Pence tick­et received 38.07% of the vote in Wash­ing­ton. Four years lat­er, the tick­et’s share of the vote actu­al­ly increased a lit­tle, to 38.77%. If you weren’t aware that that hap­pened, you could be for­giv­en for not know­ing, since the Democ­rats romped to vic­to­ry in Wash­ing­ton in both years, and increased their share of the vote by more — Clin­ton-Kaine got 54.3% of the vote, where­as Biden-Har­ris got 57.97%.

In our final pre­elec­tion poll three years ago, which field­ed in Octo­ber of 2020, we found 60% sup­port for Joe Biden, 37% sup­port for Don­ald Trump, and 2% not sure. We did not include minor par­ty can­di­dates as choic­es in that sur­vey, but they were present as options on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. The total non-Trump vote end­ed up being 60.57% in Wash­ing­ton, exclud­ing write-ins.

Back when Biden was vying for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion with sev­er­al oth­er hope­fuls, we looked at who might be the strongest oppo­nent for Trump in Wash­ing­ton, and found that Eliz­a­beth War­ren did ever so slight­ly bet­ter than Biden or Bernie Sanders. We released that find­ing in Novem­ber of 2019.

War­ren sus­pend­ed her cam­paign before vot­ing real­ly got under­way in Wash­ing­ton’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. Bernie Sanders stayed in through our pri­ma­ry, but could­n’t quite keep pace with Biden, whose polit­i­cal stock rock­et­ed upwards after his big win in South Car­oli­na and sub­se­quent Super Tues­day dom­i­nance. Biden won the Wash­ing­ton pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry with 37.94% of the vote. Sanders received 36.57%, and War­ren received 9.15%.

Wash­ing­ton is slat­ed to hold a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry again next year, in March, and it will mark only the sec­ond time in state his­to­ry that both major par­ties use it for del­e­gate allo­ca­tion, with the cau­cus-only era now in the rearview mirror.

That pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry will be an open pri­ma­ry, mean­ing that any­one who wants to affil­i­ate — at least tem­porar­i­ly — with the Repub­li­can Par­ty will be able to par­tic­i­pate by check­ing a box, which means it won’t be restrict­ed to just ultra MAGA par­ti­sans. How­ev­er, they are like­ly to be the biggest vot­ing bloc.

Under Wash­ing­ton State law, the par­ties con­trol whose names appear on the bal­lot, exer­cis­ing their First Amend­ment rights of free assem­bly. It is pos­si­ble that Biden’s name will be the only name on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s bal­lot. The Repub­li­can Par­ty’s bal­lot will prob­a­bly have quite a few names on it.

Insights from our crosstabs

Trump and DeSan­tis per­formed about the same with Repub­li­can vot­ers against Biden in our sur­vey — Trump gets 85% and DeSan­tis gets 84%. Like­wise, Biden got 90% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers against Trump, and 89% against DeSantis.

Inter­est­ing­ly, slight­ly more self-iden­ti­fied Repub­li­can vot­ers say they’d cross over to back Biden if Trump was the nom­i­nee — Biden gets 7% of Repub­li­can vot­ers against Trump ver­sus 5% of them against DeSantis.

Where there’s a big­ger dif­fer­ence, and where DeSan­tis has an advan­tage, is with self-iden­ti­fied inde­pen­dent vot­ers. 47% of inde­pen­dents in this poll picked DeSan­tis, while 39% picked Biden, and 13% said they were not sure.

But with Trump as the Repub­li­can option, Biden got a plu­ral­i­ty of the inde­pen­dents. 42% of inde­pen­dents picked Biden with Trump as the oppo­nent. Trump got 39% and 19% said they were not sure.

This was a poll of like­ly gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers, so we could­n’t look at whether Repub­li­can and Repub­li­can lean­ing vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State pre­fer Trump to DeSan­tis, or DeSan­tis to Trump, for the par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial nomination.

The crosstabs from our hypo­thet­i­cal matchups sug­gest the Repub­li­can base still likes Trump, but will they like him more than DeSan­tis next spring, espe­cial­ly as Trump goes on tri­al for his crimes? We shall see, pre­sum­ing the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion is still being con­test­ed at the time we hold our pres­i­den­tial primary.