Poll Watch: Like NPI, Elway finds 2024 WA gubernatorial race looking competitive

Long­time Wash­ing­ton State poll­ster Stu­art Elway released a sec­ond round of elec­toral-relat­ed find­ings from his Decem­ber 2023 sur­vey of the Wash­ing­ton State elec­torate today — find­ings which cor­re­late NPI’s pre­vi­ous research sug­gest­ing that the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State guber­na­to­r­i­al race is competitive.

In part­ner­ship with Cross­cut, Elway sur­veyed 403 reg­is­tered vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton from Decem­ber 26th-28th, 2023. 116 took the sur­vey via land­line with live inter­view­ers, 149 took the sur­vey via mobile tele­phone with live inter­view­ers, and 138 took the sur­vey online using a link texted to them. 43% of the respon­dents are clas­si­fied as Democ­rats, 32% as inde­pen­dents, and 25% as Republicans.

Asked about this year’s guber­na­to­r­i­al race, a total of 37% of the respon­dents said they either intend­ed to vote for Demo­c­ra­t­ic fron­trun­ner Bob Fer­gu­son, or could vote for him, while a total of 31% said they either intend­ed to vote for Repub­li­can fron­trun­ner Dave Reichert, or could vote for him. Small­er num­bers of respon­dents said they intend­ed to vote or could vote for Demo­c­rat Mark Mul­let and Repub­li­can Semi Bird — Fer­gu­son and Reichert’s main com­pe­ti­tion for the position.

Sur­vey tak­ers were not asked a tra­di­tion­al horse race ques­tion (i.e. if the elec­tion were being held today, who would you vote for?) because Elway felt with the elec­tion being so far away, an uncon­ven­tion­al approach was warranted.

Elway’s guber­na­to­r­i­al ques­tion went like this:

QUESTION: There are cur­rent­ly four can­di­dates who have announced their inten­tion to run for Gov­er­nor. The elec­tion is almost a year away, but for each can­di­date, indi­cate – as things stand today – whether you: 1) Intend to vote for him; 2) Could vote for him; or 3) Will not vote for him for Gov­er­nor. If you are not famil­iar with the can­di­date, just indi­cate that.

These were the answers, as graphed by Crosscut:

Elway also asked respon­dents which par­ty’s can­di­dates they were inclined to sup­port in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. As with the guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test, a ques­tion with more than three answer choic­es was pre­sent­ed to respondents:

QUESTION: There will also be elec­tions for State Leg­is­la­ture. You will be asked to vote for two state rep­re­sen­ta­tives and per­haps a state sen­a­tor, depend­ing on your dis­trict. As things stand today, in the races for the state leg­is­la­ture in your Dis­trict, are you like­ly to vote for:

ANSWERS:

• All Democ­rats: 24%
• Most­ly Democ­rats: 26%
• Most­ly Repub­li­cans: 17%
• All Repub­li­cans: 17%
• Don’t Know Yet: 16%

In total, 50% said they were inclined to vote for all Democ­rats, or most­ly Democ­rats, and 34% said all Repub­li­cans or most­ly Republicans.

There was also a ques­tion about who should con­trol state government:

QUESTION: Democ­rats have held the governor’s office since 1984, have had the major­i­ty in both hous­es of the state leg­is­la­ture since 2018 and now hold all eight of the statewide elect­ed offices. Which of these elec­tion out­comes comes clos­est to your opin­ion about the com­ing election:

ANSWERS:

• It is impor­tant that Democ­rats keep con­trol state gov­ern­ment: 22%
• It would be bet­ter if Democ­rats keep con­trol of state gov­ern­ment: 17%
• It would be best if state gov­ern­ment con­trol was divid­ed between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats: 25%
• It would be bet­ter if Repub­li­cans took con­trol of state gov­ern­ment: 10%
• It is impor­tant that Repub­li­cans take con­trol of state gov­ern­ment: 18%
• No opin­ion: 7%

A total of 39% expressed a pref­er­ence for con­tin­ued Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol. 28% expressed a pref­er­ence for con­trol to shift to Republicans.

25% would like divid­ed gov­ern­ment, mean­ing a Leg­is­la­ture in which one par­ty con­trols one cham­ber and anoth­er par­ty the oth­er, or a gov­er­nor from a dif­fer­ent par­ty than one or both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture. 7% had no opinion.

These leg­isla­tive find­ings sug­gest an edge for Democ­rats, and are con­sis­tent with what we saw in our gener­ic bal­lot polling last cycle and the actu­al elec­tion results, which yield­ed strong and slight­ly expand­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties in what many pun­dits had claimed was going to be a “red wave” year.

As a ques­tion­naire design­er myself, I think the elec­toral ques­tions above are unnec­es­sar­i­ly com­plex. I under­stand Elway’s desire to cap­ture the nuances of pub­lic opin­ion, but ask­ing fol­low-up ques­tions could have served that purpose.

I’m espe­cial­ly per­plexed by the answer choic­es in the third ques­tion (it is impor­tant ver­sus it would be bet­ter if a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal par­ty con­trolled state gov­ern­ment). That’s not a scale that makes sense to me. Why not just ask respon­dents who they want to see in con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture: Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans? (This, inci­den­tal­ly, is what NPI does in our statewide polls).

In Novem­ber, NPI found Dave Reichert and Bob Fer­gu­son tied in a four-way race and near­ly tied in a hypo­thet­i­cal head-to-head, with Reichert hold­ing a slight, two-point lead over Fer­gu­son. This find­ing got a lot of atten­tion. It was the most-read Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate post of 2023, and has been men­tioned in a lot of media cov­er­age since then, includ­ing a Politi­co arti­cle last month.

Elway’s data is anoth­er bit of evi­dence indi­cat­ing that it’s a close race, at least as things stand now. Reichert has been run­ning a fair­ly low-pro­file cam­paign thus far, coast­ing along on his name recog­ni­tion, while Fer­gu­son has been focused on rais­ing mon­ey, scoop­ing up endorse­ments, and lay­ing groundwork.

Lat­er this year, the can­di­dates and their allies will begin spend­ing a lot of mon­ey to com­mu­ni­cate with vot­ers. We will see to what extent the dynam­ics change as vot­ers hear more from and about the guber­na­to­r­i­al candidates.