Repub­li­can Dave Reichert has estab­lished a two per­cent­age point lead over Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son in Wash­ing­ton State’s 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test with a lit­tle less than a year to go before the dead­line arrives to sub­mit bal­lots in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, accord­ing to the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est statewide sur­vey of like­ly voters.

46% of 700 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers sur­veyed on Tues­day and Wednes­day of this week by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling said they would vote for Reichert if the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Reichert and Fer­gu­son. 44% said they would vote for Fer­gu­son, who NPI’s pre­vi­ous polling has found to be the Demo­c­ra­t­ic fron­trun­ner. 9% were not sure.

Reichert is a for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and King Coun­ty Sher­iff who pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered chal­leng­ing Jay Inslee in 2016 and 2020, but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to run. Reichert won sev­en con­sec­u­tive elec­tions for Con­gress in the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016).

Fer­gu­son has served as Wash­ing­ton State’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al for over ten years. He took office in Jan­u­ary of 2013 after defeat­ing Rea­gan Dunn in a hard fought bat­tle to choose a suc­ces­sor to Rob McKen­na, who opt­ed to run for Gov­er­nor instead, and lost to Reichert’s col­league Jay Inslee, who at that time had also put in more than a decade of ser­vice to Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in the U.S. House.

Reichert announced sev­er­al months ago that he was reen­ter­ing the elec­toral are­na as a can­di­date for Gov­er­nor in 2024. Reichert’s deci­sion to run prompt­ed anoth­er can­di­date, fel­low Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia, to quick­ly piv­ot and move into the Unit­ed States Sen­ate race as Maria Cantwell’s chal­lenger. Reichert is now cam­paign­ing for a spot on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot with Gar­ci­a’s support.

Reichert and Fer­gu­son are each fac­ing one rival from with­in their par­ty who has raised a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey and meets the cri­te­ria that we have pre­vi­ous­ly estab­lished for inclu­sion in our 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al polling.

That cri­te­ria is as follows:

• Must be an offi­cial­ly declared can­di­date for the office who has filed a C1 with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC)
• Must have declared an affil­i­a­tion with a major par­ty (the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or the Repub­li­can Party)
• Must have report­ed rais­ing at least $50,000 in ear­ly mon­ey for their cur­rent guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign or have pre­vi­ous­ly raised at least $250,000 in a pri­or cam­paign for any state-lev­el office, or both

Reichert’s Repub­li­can rival is Semi Bird, an ultra MAGA for­mer Rich­land school board mem­ber who was recent­ly oust­ed from office in a recall and char­ac­ter­izes him­self as a con­sti­tu­tion­al Chris­t­ian conservative.

Fer­gu­son’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival is Mark Mul­let, a Wash­ing­ton State Sen­a­tor who has rep­re­sent­ed the 5th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (sit­u­at­ed in East King Coun­ty) since Jan­u­ary of 2013, the same month Fer­gu­son became Attor­ney General.

We asked a sep­a­rate ques­tion in our sur­vey pre­ced­ing our Reichert ver­sus Fer­gu­son head to head ques­tion which includ­ed Bird and Mul­let, and we found that nei­ther of them is any­where close to the fron­trun­ners. In that four can­di­date field ques­tion, Reichert and Fer­gu­son were tied at 31% apiece, Bird had 10%, and Mul­let had just 5%. 22% of respon­dents said they were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of the first part of NPI’s Novem­ber 2023 guber­na­to­r­i­al poll find­ing, which asked respon­dents about a field of four can­di­dates (North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute)

Since polls can’t and don’t pre­dict the future, we can’t say at this junc­ture what’s going to hap­pen in the August Top Two elec­tion next sum­mer, but we see no evi­dence that either Mul­let or Bird have a path to the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. Reichert and Fer­gu­son col­lec­tive­ly have sup­port from over three in five voters.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Mul­let has shed two per­cent­age points since our last sur­vey in June, and that is despite Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz’s recent depar­ture from the guber­na­to­r­i­al race to run for Con­gress, which some observers spec­u­lat­ed might ben­e­fit Mul­let by leav­ing him as Fer­gu­son’s sole Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival.

This fresh sur­vey data sug­gests Franz’s exit has­n’t helped Mul­let at all. Instead of gain­ing trac­tion, Mul­let has been expe­ri­enc­ing neg­a­tive momentum.

Bird’s posi­tion, mean­while, is basi­cal­ly unchanged — he had 10% sup­port in our June sur­vey and he has 10% now. Bird appears to have some devot­ed sup­port­ers, but not enough to give Dave Reichert much heartburn.

Here is the full text of both ques­tions we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State were being held today, and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, Repub­li­can Semi Bird, Demo­c­rat Mark Mul­let, and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

Half the poll sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates as shown above and half the sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates shown below. The word­ing was the same, but the order was invert­ed to make the ques­tion as neu­tral as possible. 

If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State were being held today, and the can­di­dates were Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, Demo­c­rat Mark Mul­let, Repub­li­can Semi Bird, and Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Bob Fer­gu­son: 31%
• Dave Reichert: 31%
• Semi Bird: 10%
• Mark Mul­let: 5%
• Not sure: 22%

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

Half the poll sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates as shown above and half the sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates shown below. The word­ing was the same, but the order was invert­ed to make the ques­tion as neu­tral as possible. 

If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Repub­li­can Dave Reichert and Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Dave Reichert: 46%
• Bob Fer­gu­son: 44%
• Not sure: 9%

Our sur­vey of 700 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Novem­ber 14th through Wednes­day, Novem­ber 15th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.7% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Fol­low this link for addi­tion­al method­ol­o­gy details, includ­ing demo­graph­ic data.

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.

Why Reichert is ahead in the head-to-head

To under­stand why Dave Reichert has a slim lead in the head to head matchup with Bob Fer­gu­son, let’s dive into the crosstabs.

Here are the respons­es by par­ty for that question:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS BY PARTY:

• Democ­rats
  • Dave Reichert: 17%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 76%
  • Not sure: 8%
• Repub­li­cans
  • Dave Reichert: 90%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 7%
  • Not sure: 3%
• Inde­pen­dents
  • Dave Reichert: 47%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 38%
  • Not sure: 15%

From look­ing at the answers by par­ty, we can see that Repub­li­can vot­ers are very unit­ed behind Dave Reichert, where­as Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are less com­mit­ted to Bob Fer­gu­son. A plu­ral­i­ty of inde­pen­dent vot­ers, mean­while, favor Reichert.

Put those dynam­ics togeth­er and the result is a com­pet­i­tive race one year out.

Analysis and takeaways

Our team imag­ines that many Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers may be sur­prised by this data. Because Wash­ing­ton has a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic tilt, we don’t often find a Repub­li­can ahead of a Demo­c­rat in a statewide race in Wash­ing­ton, par­tic­u­lar­ly when that race is for a top of the tick­et office like Gov­er­nor. That makes this find­ing one of the most notable and strik­ing that we’ve ever published.

Here are some things to keep in mind while pon­der­ing these numbers.

This is an open seat. Cur­rent Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee decid­ed last spring not to seek an unprece­dent­ed fourth term as the state’s chief exec­u­tive. With Democ­rats not field­ing an incum­bent in this con­test as they were in the last two pres­i­den­tial cycles, Repub­li­cans have bet­ter chances of win­ning. It’s usu­al­ly much eas­i­er for the par­ty out of pow­er to pick up a key posi­tion like a gov­er­nor­ship when the seat is open. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has a track record of pur­su­ing such oppor­tu­ni­ties. The last two times that a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor in Wash­ing­ton did­n’t seek reelec­tion (2004 and 2012), Repub­li­cans field­ed can­di­dates who were com­pet­i­tive. Dino Rossi and Rob McKen­na did­n’t win, but they con­tend­ed well.

Even in this high­ly polar­ized era, states that are usu­al­ly bas­tions for one par­ty are capa­ble of occa­sion­al­ly elect­ing can­di­dates from the oth­er. As we just saw in Ken­tucky, it is pos­si­ble for a can­di­date belong­ing to a par­ty that usu­al­ly strug­gles to win statewide elec­tions to be com­pet­i­tive and sub­se­quent­ly win. It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to say Ken­tucky is a Repub­li­can bas­tion: this is the state that has repeat­ed­ly sent Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate. Yet Andy Beshear, a lik­able Demo­c­rat, was able to win two suc­ces­sive elec­tions as gov­er­nor — one four years ago and anoth­er this month.

Reichert is well known and has a track record of elec­toral suc­cess. Dave Reichert does­n’t have the work eth­ic of Bob Fer­gu­son, but he does have plen­ty of name ID and a his­to­ry of win­ning in a large swath of the state usu­al­ly clas­si­fied as a swing dis­trict, even in Demo­c­ra­t­ic wave years like 2006 and 2008 against a well-fund­ed chal­lenger. I men­tioned above that Reichert had won sev­en con­sec­u­tive elec­tions for Con­gress. That’s a lot. With the excep­tion of Rob McKen­na, all oth­er recent Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­fuls ran with­out the ben­e­fit of that sort of exten­sive elec­toral expe­ri­ence on their resumes.

Reichert is cur­rent­ly run­ning with­out much bag­gage. Sev­er­al elec­tion cycles ago, Dave Reichert wise­ly decid­ed to quit while he was unde­feat­ed and get out of Con­gress. He made his exit from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the mid­way point of Don­ald Trump’s time in the Oval Office and was spared from sub­se­quent­ly hav­ing to vote on mat­ters such as Trump’s impeach­ment, which could have jeop­ar­dized his stand­ing with the Trump-wor­ship­ing Repub­li­can base. Reichert was also out of office and out of the elec­toral are­na when the hor­rif­ic Dobbs deci­sion was hand­ed down, so many Demo­c­ra­t­ic and inde­pen­dent vot­ers like­ly aren’t aware of his stri­dent oppo­si­tion to repro­duc­tive rights.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has con­trolled the gov­er­nor’s man­sion for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry. Wash­ing­ton vot­ers have not cho­sen a Repub­li­can to be the state’s chief exec­u­tive since 1980, when John Spell­man was elect­ed. Democ­rats have been run­ning the state’s exec­u­tive branch for the entire­ty of all young Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ lives and the major­i­ty of most every­one else’s. It’s under­stand­able that some vot­ers, includ­ing vot­ers who lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic, may be enter­tain­ing the idea of giv­ing a Repub­li­can a chance to gov­ern for a change. That does­n’t mean they will actu­al­ly end up vot­ing for Dave Reichert, however.

Bob Fer­gu­son’s sup­port has been grow­ing over the course of the year. This is the third time we’ve polled the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test. In our first sur­vey, which field­ed in March, before Jay Inslee announced his retire­ment, we found Bob Fer­gu­son with 21% sup­port in a hypo­thet­i­cal field that also includ­ed fel­low Democ­rats Hilary Franz and Dow Con­stan­tine plus Repub­li­can Bruce Dammeier. Dammeier had a plu­ral­i­ty lead in that sur­vey of 35%. In June, we found Fer­gu­son at 25% against Franz, Mul­let, and Repub­li­cans Semi Bird and Raul Gar­cia. Now, against Reichert, Mul­let, and Bird, Fer­gu­son has reached 31% sup­port. That’s a tra­jec­to­ry of progress and momen­tum. Can he keep it going?

The Top Two elec­tion is many months away. While 2024 might be right around the cor­ner, vot­ers will not be cast­ing bal­lots in the August Top Two elec­tion until next sum­mer. We have many sea­sons of cam­paign­ing ahead of us, and that cam­paign­ing is like­ly to alter the dynam­ics in this race. Impor­tant­ly, Bob Fer­gu­son has already raised a pret­ty large war chest and will have the resources to share his cam­paign’s mes­sage with Wash­ing­ton voters.

Reichert’s position looks a lot like McKenna’s, circa 2011

Young read­ers, out of state read­ers, or those who are new to Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics may not real­ize that the state has seen an elec­toral envi­ron­ment like this before.

In 2011 and for months into 2012, most polls showed Repub­li­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na ahead of future Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, includ­ing sur­veys done by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, one of NPI’s poll­sters, which field­ed this project for us. McKen­na led in five out of six polls con­duct­ed in 2011 and anoth­er eight out of eleven con­duct­ed in the first half of 2012, accord­ing to Wikipedia con­trib­u­tors, who’ve com­piled a lot of pub­lic opin­ion research from that cycle.

“The most like­ly match up for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton next year looks like it would be a barn burn­er, with Repub­li­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na start­ing out with just a 40–38 lead over Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Jay Inslee,” Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling not­ed in a May 18th (2011) press release. “The main rea­son McKen­na is ahead of Inslee at this point is slight­ly high­er name recog­ni­tion. 60% of vot­ers know McKen­na well enough to have formed an opin­ion about him, while that is true for only 51% when it comes to Inslee. The two have sim­i­lar net favor­a­bil­i­ty rat­ings with Inslee at +9 (30/21) and McKen­na at +8 (34/26).”

The con­sen­sus among many jour­nal­ists and observers in the 2012 cycle was that McKen­na was the fron­trun­ner and Inslee the under­dog. And the body of pub­lic opin­ion research cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ed evi­dence for that view, at least up until the point when Inslee’s cam­paign began air­ing ads cre­at­ed by Frank Greer and GMMB that intro­duced (or rein­tro­duced) him and his fam­i­ly to Wash­ing­ton voters.

After those ads began air­ing, most polls began find­ing leads for Inslee rather than McKen­na. You can see the shift in the table below, start­ing in July of 2012.

Table from Wikipedia show­ing 2011–2012 guber­na­to­r­i­al polling 

Inter­est­ing­ly, one of the ques­tions PPP asked in its May 2011 sur­vey was whether vot­ers would pre­fer Dave Reichert to Jay Inslee in a hypo­thet­i­cal matchup.

36% said they’d pre­fer Reichert if the 2012 can­di­dates for gov­er­nor were Inslee and Reichert, while 42% said Inslee. As I not­ed above, Reichert lat­er con­tem­plat­ed run­ning against Inslee in 2016 and 2020, but passed both times.

How­ev­er, now that Inslee is retir­ing, Reichert is run­ning. And like McKen­na in May of 2011, he has a two-point lead over his prob­a­ble Demo­c­ra­t­ic opponent.

But, if his­to­ry is any guide, that frag­ile lead — which is small­er than our pol­l’s mar­gin of error — could dis­ap­pear by next sum­mer, or even sooner.

A few thoughts on each candidate’s path to victory

Dave Reichert is slight­ly ahead now accord­ing to our polling, but his path to vic­to­ry is tougher due to Wash­ing­ton’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic lean. Reichert needs to keep his Repub­li­can base behind him, keep inde­pen­dents dialed in, and ensure some Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers feel com­fort­able enough cross­ing over to back him. Reichert has sig­naled that pub­lic safe­ty will be a key theme of his cam­paign along with tax cuts and dereg­u­la­tion — two long­time right wing cam­paign staples.

Bob Fer­gu­son can win by reel­ing in most of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers who are con­sid­er­ing split­ting their tick­ets and improv­ing his stand­ing with inde­pen­dents. If his cam­paign makes a con­cert­ed effort to pro­pose plans which address the anx­i­eties that vot­ers have about Wash­ing­ton’s future, like loom­ing school clo­sures and staff lay­offs in dis­tricts across the state, that could help him con­nect with vot­ers. Fer­gu­son has an oppor­tu­ni­ty in this next phase of the cam­paign to demon­strate that he’ll be an edu­ca­tion-focused gov­er­nor. It’s an issue Reichert has­n’t focused on much but it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to Washingtonians.

Closing thoughts

At NPI, we believe that polling can be an incred­i­bly use­ful tool for under­stand­ing pub­lic opin­ion. But polling has its lim­i­ta­tions and it’s impor­tant to be aware of them. As I men­tioned above, polls can’t and don’t pre­dict future elec­tion results. They are snap­shots in time, as the say­ing goes. Our team tries to point this out as often as pos­si­ble because it unfor­tu­nate­ly just does­n’t get said enough.

In 2024, we will be back with more guber­na­to­r­i­al polling at key junc­tures dur­ing the year, and we look for­ward to bring­ing you more data.

When shar­ing this poll find­ing with oth­ers, please encour­age peo­ple to read the accom­pa­ny­ing analy­sis pro­vid­ed here in this post. Our team believes that poll find­ings real­ly ben­e­fit from con­text, which is why we always pro­vide analy­sis along with the text of our ques­tions and the responses.

And last­ly, if you appre­ci­ate NPI’s research and find it help­ful, we hope you’ll con­sid­er sup­port­ing us by donat­ing or becom­ing a mem­ber.