Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Maria Cantwell holds a dou­ble dig­it lead over Repub­li­can chal­lenger Raul Gar­cia in Wash­ing­ton State’s 2024 U.S. Sen­ate race and appears to be on a smooth tra­jec­to­ry to win­ning reelec­tion next Novem­ber, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est statewide sur­vey has found.

51% of 700 like­ly Wash­ing­ton State gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers said they would sup­port Cantwell if the elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate were being held now. 38% said they would sup­port Gar­cia, the same per­cent­age who said they’d sup­port Don­ald Trump in a rematch with Joe Biden. 11% were not sure.

Cantwell was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2000 and has been Wash­ing­ton State’s junior sen­a­tor ever since, serv­ing along­side Pat­ty Mur­ray, who is now the most senior mem­ber of the entire Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. Cantwell nar­row­ly defeat­ed Repub­li­can Slade Gor­ton and joined a cham­ber even­ly divid­ed between the two major par­ties. She has won reelec­tion with ease three times since then — in 2006, 2012, and 2018, all of which were Demo­c­ra­t­ic wave years.

Pri­or to defeat­ing Gor­ton, Cantwell was a vice pres­i­dent at Real­Net­works. She joined the com­pa­ny after los­ing her U.S. House seat in the “Repub­li­can Rev­o­lu­tion” of 1994. A fun bit of elec­toral his­to­ry: Future Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee won Cantwell’s old seat back for the Democ­rats in 1998 and held it for over a decade. Vot­ers chose Suzan Del­Bene to replace Inslee in 2012 and have con­tin­ued to reelect her; Del­Bene now chairs the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, the cam­paign arm of the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucus.

Raul Gar­cia is a doc­tor with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in emer­gency med­i­cine. He was born in Cuba and emi­grat­ed to Spain at the age of eleven with his fam­i­ly to escape the Com­mu­nist regime of Fidel Cas­tro. They moved to Flori­da after suc­cess­ful­ly apply­ing for asy­lum from the Unit­ed States. Gar­cia is a grad­u­ate of both the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi and the New York Col­lege of Osteo­path­ic Med­i­cine. He ran for gov­er­nor in 2020 against Jay Inslee, but was elim­i­nat­ed in the Top Two elec­tion, which Inslee and for­mer Repub­lic police chief Loren Culp won.

Gar­cia was a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date for sev­er­al weeks ear­li­er this year, but dropped out in favor of Dave Reichert when Reichert decid­ed to run. Gar­cia prompt­ly endorsed Reichert and jumped into the U.S. Sen­ate race as Cantwell’s oppo­nent, solv­ing a prob­lem for the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, which had not at that point found a cred­i­ble chal­lenger to oppose Cantwell.

Gar­cia is endorsed by Reichert, for­mer Gov­er­nor Dan Evans (who is still a Repub­li­can despite what has hap­pened to his par­ty), for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na, for­mer State Sen­a­tor Dino Rossi, Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Bruce Dammeier, for­mer Sec­re­taries of State Ralph Munro and Sam Reed, and an impres­sive­ly long list of Repub­li­can state legislators.

Accord­ing to the lat­est data avail­able from the FEC, Gar­cia has raised $204,437.42 since he began cam­paign­ing in July. Cantwell, mean­while, has report­ed total receipts of $7,177,955.29 and con­tri­bu­tions of $6,521,143.09. Sen­a­tor Cantwell’s reelec­tion cam­paign is among the many finan­cial spon­sors of NPI’s research, but was not involved in the design or the field­ing of this survey.

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

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Unit­ed States Sen­ate were being held today and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Maria Cantwell and Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Maria Cantwell: 51%
• Raul Gar­cia: 38%
• Not sure: 11%

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.

Corroborating data

This is the sec­ond time this week that a pub­licly-released poll find­ing has found Sen­a­tor Cantwell com­fort­ably ahead in the 2024 U.S. Sen­ate race.

The first was on Wednes­day, when Cross­cut pub­lished Elway Research’s lat­est statewide poll. That sur­vey found Cantwell ahead of Gar­cia by twen­ty points, with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of respon­dents unde­cid­ed. Here’s the breakdown:

QUESTION: Cantwell cur­rent­ly has one declared oppo­nent. As things stand today, are you inclined to vote for…

ANSWERS:

• Demo­c­rat Maria Cantwell: 43%
• Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia: 23%
• A dif­fer­ent Demo­c­rat: 3%
• A dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can: 6%
• Unde­cid­ed: 25%

Elway’s sur­vey con­sists of 403 reg­is­tered vot­ers. 82 were inter­viewed on land­lines, 179 were inter­viewed on mobiles, and 133 were recruit­ed by text to take the sur­vey online. The mar­gin of error of the sur­vey is +/- 5%. The sur­vey field­ed from Octo­ber 30th — Novem­ber 3rd. Data is avail­able here.

Unlike in our poll, which was a very sim­ple head-to-head, Elway respon­dents were giv­en the addi­tion­al answer choic­es of “a dif­fer­ent Demo­c­rat” or “a dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can.” That’s not a design choice we would make in our ques­tion­naires, but as the say­ing goes, to each their own. Elway Research has a most­ly sol­id track record and we’re always hap­py to have their data avail­able to scrutinize.

We can see from the answers above that twice as many respon­dents picked “a dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can” than “a dif­fer­ent Demo­c­rat,” so the inclu­sion of those addi­tion­al options seems to have impact­ed Gar­cia more than Cantwell.

In our sur­vey, Gar­cia ben­e­fits from being the only option for Repub­li­can vot­ers, and Cantwell like­wise ben­e­fits from being the only option for Demo­c­ra­t­ic voters.

Sen­a­tor Cantwell is above fifty, which to us is the key indi­ca­tor — an incum­bent at or above fifty in an ear­ly poll is con­sid­ered to be in good shape for reelection.

And Gar­cia is right about where we’d antic­i­pate a Repub­li­can oppo­nent of Cantwell to be. The per­cent­age Gar­cia has in our sur­vey (which mir­rors Trump’s as men­tioned ear­li­er) is prob­a­bly much clos­er to the per­cent­age Gar­cia could con­ceiv­ably be expect­ed to get in next year’s gen­er­al elec­tion. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that nei­ther polls or pun­dits can pre­dict elec­tions, but we can dis­cuss pos­si­ble out­comes using avail­able elec­toral and pub­lic opin­ion research data.

Last cycle (2021–2022) versus this cycle (2023–2024)

In the 2021–2022 cycle, our polling con­sis­tent­ly found Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray at or above fifty per­cent, with Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley usu­al­ly behind by a dou­ble-dig­it mar­gin. Our final pre­elec­tion sur­vey put Mur­ray at 52% and Smi­ley at 42%, with 6% unde­cid­ed. Mur­ray sub­se­quent­ly picked up most of the not sure vot­ers and received 57.15% of the vote. Smi­ley got 42.63%.

Here in the 2023–2024 cycle, we’ve now found Sen­a­tor Cantwell above fifty per­cent three times: in March of this year, in June of this year, and now this month. Our March and June sur­veys pit­ted Cantwell against a hypo­thet­i­cal can­di­date, for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beutler.

Her­rera Beut­ler took a pass on run­ning for Sen­ate, but she is run­ning statewide in 2024, just for a dif­fer­ent office: Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands.

Now that Cantwell has a declared oppo­nent in Raul Gar­cia, we can final­ly start doing head-to-head polling between the can­di­dates Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are like­ly to see on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot next year for this office. As in 2022, we plan to con­tin­ue tak­ing the pulse of the Wash­ing­ton elec­torate. We’ll con­tin­ue to bring you find­ings in this mar­quee U.S. sen­ate con­test at key inter­vals in 2024.