Maria Cantwell retains fifteen point lead over hypothetical opponent Jaime Herrera Beutler

Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell remains well posi­tioned for reelec­tion to the U.S. Sen­ate next year in the Ever­green State, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s June 2023 sur­vey of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers has confirmed.

Cantwell con­tin­ues to enjoy a fif­teen point lead over hypo­thet­i­cal Repub­li­can oppo­nent Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, a mar­gin unchanged from our last sur­vey back in March. Inter­est­ing­ly, there were few­er unde­cid­ed vot­ers this time around: 52% of respon­dents said they’d vote for Cantwell, 37% said Her­rera Beut­ler, who has made no moves towards run­ning, and 11% were not sure, down from 14%.

Cantwell was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2000, defeat­ing the late Repub­li­can Slade Gor­ton in one of the clos­est U.S. Sen­ate races in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Cantwell, a for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive who was oust­ed in the 1994 midterms, edged out Gor­ton by just 2,229 votes, out of 2.4 mil­lion cast. The con­test went to a recount; Cantwell was able to pre­vail thanks to strong sup­port in King County.

Since that inau­gur­al Sen­ate cam­paign, it has been smooth sail­ing for Cantwell. She has yet to face a dif­fi­cult reelec­tion envi­ron­ment. Her cam­paign for a sec­ond term took place in 2006, her cam­paign for a third term took place in 2012, and her cam­paign for a fourth term took place in 2018 — all “blue wave” cycles.

With Repub­li­cans hav­ing spent over twen­ty mil­lion dol­lars just last year try­ing and fail­ing to oust Pat­ty Mur­ray (who is now the Sen­ate’s Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore!), and with bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties for pick­ups else­where, like in Neva­da or Ari­zona, there seems to be no appetite to seri­ous­ly chal­lenge Cantwell.

They might still be recov­er­ing from the exhaus­tion of last year’s elec­toral cat­a­stro­phe, but the WSRP and NRSC will find some­one to run against Cantwell even­tu­al­ly. Since they’ve yet to do so, we’ve con­tin­ued to look at Her­rera Beut­ler in our polling as a hypo­thet­i­cal oppo­nent for Cantwell.

Her­rera Beut­ler was, until Jan­u­ary, the Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Ever­green State’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, which encom­pass­es South­west Wash­ing­ton. Her reelec­tion bid ran head­long into ultra MAGA oppo­si­tion after she coura­geous­ly vot­ed to impeach Don­ald Trump, and she was elim­i­nat­ed in the August 2022 Top Two elec­tion, with Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Marie Glue­senkamp Perez and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Joe Kent each get­ting more votes.

Glue­senkamp Perez went on to defeat Kent in the runoff, in a vic­to­ry that stunned nation­al pun­dits, but not our team at NPI, because our polling had shown that it was a plau­si­ble out­come only a few weeks before­hand.

Her­rera Beut­ler would prob­a­bly be able to raise mon­ey for a Sen­ate cam­paign pret­ty eas­i­ly — state and nation­al Repub­li­cans would hap­pi­ly back her if she want­ed to run. But our guess is she won’t jump in. Her chances of win­ning just aren’t very good, as we can now see from mul­ti­ple polls sea­sons apart.

Here’s the text of the ques­tion we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: If the 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion for Unit­ed States Sen­ate were being held today and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Maria Cantwell and Repub­li­can Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Maria Cantwell (D): 52%
• Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler (R): 37%
• Not sure: 11%

You might think that owing to her impeach­ment vote and ouster last year, Her­rera Beut­ler would have lack­lus­ter sup­port among Repub­li­can vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton. How­ev­er, the base seems inclined to sup­port her against Cantwell — 83% of Repub­li­can vot­ers say they’d pick her, com­pared to 85% who’d vote for Trump against Biden. Plen­ty of inde­pen­dent vot­ers are inter­est­ed in Her­rera Beut­ler. She actu­al­ly got a plu­ral­i­ty of inde­pen­dents in this sur­vey: 43%. 39% picked Cantwell.

But Wash­ing­ton is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic state, and Cantwell has the Demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­torate almost total­ly unit­ed behind her. 91% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are sup­port­ing Cantwell for reelec­tion. She did slight­ly bet­ter with Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in this sur­vey than Pres­i­dent Joe Biden did, which shows how much vot­ers here like her.

Impres­sive­ly, Cantwell also came in four points ahead of Her­rera Beut­ler in South­west Wash­ing­ton and the Olympic Penin­su­la, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of which is JHB’s home turf. Cantwell has a lead in every West­ern Wash­ing­ton region, which is why statewide, she’s main­tain­ing that fif­teen point edge. Her­rera Beut­ler does rea­son­ably well in Cen­tral and East­ern Wash­ing­ton though, with 55% sup­port there, com­pared to 60–61% sup­port in that region for Trump and DeSantis.

We’ll look at this con­test again in the autumn. Per­haps by then, Repub­li­cans will have recruit­ed a desired stan­dard bear­er for our 2024 U.S. Sen­ate race.