Bob Ferguson overtakes Dave Reichert in NPI’s first gubernatorial poll of 2024

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has jumped ahead of for­mer Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Dave Reichert in NPI’s first guber­na­to­r­i­al poll of 2024 and fourth over­all of the cycle, open­ing up a four point head-to-head lead after pre­vi­ous­ly trail­ing Reichert by two points in our Novem­ber 2023 survey.

Asked this week who they would vote for in a two-way race if the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion were being held today, 46% of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers said they’d back Fer­gu­son, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic fron­trun­ner, who is endorsed by out­go­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell. 42% said they would vote for Reichert, the Repub­li­can fron­trun­ner. 11% were not sure.

In Novem­ber, it was Reichert who gar­nered 46%, with Fer­gu­son at 44%. But with 2024 hav­ing final­ly arrived, our lat­est research sug­gests the dynam­ics are shift­ing. Reichert’s pri­or advan­tage was due to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers’ inter­est in his can­di­da­cy. That has waned: Few­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers indi­cat­ed in this sur­vey that they would vote for Reichert if the elec­tion were being held now. Instead, Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers  are more uni­form­ly coa­lesc­ing behind Fer­gu­son as the par­ty’s stan­dard bearer.

Fer­gu­son has held statewide office since 2013. He won three con­sec­u­tive cam­paigns for Attor­ney Gen­er­al pri­or to enter­ing the guber­na­to­r­i­al race when incum­bent Jay Inslee announced he would­n’t seek an unprece­dent­ed fourth term.

Reichert served for over a decade in Con­gress, rep­re­sent­ing Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. He went unde­feat­ed in all of his con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns, but Democ­rats picked up the 8th with Dr. Kim Schri­er fol­low­ing his retire­ment in 2018. Reichert con­tem­plat­ed run­ning against Inslee in 2016 and 2020, but opt­ed against it. With the seat now open, how­ev­er, Reichert has entered the are­na.

While Fer­gu­son and Reichert are their respec­tive par­ty’s fron­trun­ners, they have com­pe­ti­tion. They 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. In Fer­gu­son’s case, that is State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let, and in Reichert’s case, it is for­mer Rich­land school board mem­ber Semi Bird, who was oust­ed in a recall last summer.

Accord­ing­ly, we also asked our respon­dents a four-way ques­tion as well, which actu­al­ly pre­ced­ed the head-to-head ques­tion in our sur­vey. In that ques­tion, we found an eight point lead for Fer­gu­son, with 35% of respon­dents say­ing they’d vote for him if the August Top Two elec­tion were being held now, 27% pre­fer­ring Reichert, 9% pre­fer­ring Bird, and 4% pre­fer­ring Mul­let. 25% were not sure.

Fer­gu­son and Reichert were tied in the four-way ques­tion back in Novem­ber, so Fer­gu­son’s eight-point lead here is a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment in the race.

Our cri­te­ria for inclu­sion in the Top Two guber­na­to­r­i­al ques­tion 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

Fer­gu­son, Reichert, Mul­let, and Bird are the only can­di­dates for gov­er­nor who meet this cri­te­ria out of more than a dozen who have filed, so the field was lim­it­ed to them. As the data shows, nei­ther of them is gain­ing any trac­tion. In fact, they’ve both slipped by a smidgen: Bird went from 10% in June and Novem­ber of 2023 to 9% in this sur­vey, and Mul­let went from 5% to 4%.

Polls aren’t pre­dic­tive — I feel I’m oblig­ed to say that every time we release a major elec­toral poll find­ing — but all of the cred­i­ble data that we have sug­gests Fer­gu­son and Reichert are high­ly like­ly to pre­vail in the Top Two elim­i­na­tion round and dis­patch their rivals. There would have to be the equiv­a­lent of a polit­i­cal earth­quake before ear­ly August for that dynam­ic to change.

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: 35%
• Dave Reichert: 27%
• Semi Bird: 9%
• Mark Mul­let: 4%
• Not sure: 25%

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:

• Bob Fer­gu­son: 46%
• Dave Reichert: 42%
• Not sure: 11%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Novem­ber 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2024.

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 +/- 3.5% 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.

Why’d the lead flip? In a couple words: Democratic voters

To under­stand why Bob Fer­gu­son is now ahead after hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly trailed Reichert in our last sur­vey, 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: 12%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 82%
  • Not sure: 6%
• Repub­li­cans
  • Dave Reichert: 89%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 4%
  • Not sure: 7%
• Inde­pen­dents
  • Dave Reichert: 48%
  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 32%
  • Not sure: 20%

In Novem­ber, Reichert had 17% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers. Now he has only 12%, with Fer­gu­son’s sup­port among self-iden­ti­fied Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers hav­ing climbed from 76% to 82% over the past few months. Since Reichert’s stand­ing with Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers is undi­min­ished from our last sur­vey (89% ver­sus 90% for the Repub­li­cans and 48% ver­sus 47% for inde­pen­dents) we can say that it’s this shift among Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers that is dri­ving Fer­gu­son’s win­ter­time lead.

Analysis and takeaways

As allud­ed to above, to win the gov­er­nor­ship this year, Dave Reichert needs to con­vince vot­ers who usu­al­ly lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic to back his can­di­da­cy instead of Bob Fer­gu­son’s. That was always like­ly to be a tall order, but this new find­ing sug­gests it could be ridicu­lous­ly dif­fi­cult, since it shows Reichert start­ing to fade ear­ly, with­out even the influ­ence of attack ads and oppo­si­tion messaging.

Our team thinks the fol­low­ing polit­i­cal dynam­ics may be work­ing against Reichert at this par­tic­u­lar junc­ture in the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al campaign:

• Lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty. Reichert has not been run­ning a force­ful, vis­i­ble cam­paign thus far. He’s done a lit­tle earned media, but not much. He seems to have been bliss­ful­ly coast­ing along on name recog­ni­tion and that’s not going to be suf­fi­cient to defeat Bob Fer­gu­son, in our view.
• Don­ald Trump’s march to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Since our last sur­vey field­ed, sev­er­al states have held pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nat­ing events and Trump has won them all, while his rivals for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion have all bowed out, except for Nik­ki Haley. Trump is polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in Wash­ing­ton State and his tight hold on the par­ty could be hurt­ing Reichert.
• Con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans’ infight­ing and incom­pe­tence. Opti­cal­ly speak­ing, the last few weeks have been a dis­as­ter for Repub­li­cans, with unforced error after unforced error. Notably, nation­al Repub­li­cans just killed the bor­der deal they them­selves demand­ed. And vot­ers seem to be tak­ing notice. Reichert may not be in that cau­cus any­more, but he’s nev­er­the­less ask­ing vot­ers to take a chance on him while his par­ty makes a big mess of things in the Oth­er Wash­ing­ton. The behav­ior of his for­mer col­leagues in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives does­n’t inspire confidence.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic groups have yet to launch elec­tion­eer­ing oper­a­tions against Reichert, but they will. They can be expect­ed to high­light Reichert’s oppo­si­tion to repro­duc­tive rights and assail his 2017–2018 vot­ing record in the House as being dis­turbing­ly aligned with Don­ald Trump’s extreme agenda.

Abor­tion and Trump were, in the eyes of sev­er­al Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, two very pow­er­ful cud­gels wield­ed by Democ­rats that led to their awful per­for­mance in the 2022 midterms. Both cud­gels are sure to be deployed against Reichert, and they could fur­ther under­mine his prospects.

Favorability ratings: Ferguson starts out 2024 with a positive spread, while Reichert begins the year underwater

In addi­tion to our usu­al sea­son­al “horser­ace” polling, for this sur­vey, we asked respon­dents how they per­ceive each can­di­date. We found a four-point pos­i­tive spread for Bob Fer­gu­son and a six-point neg­a­tive spread for Reichert:

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Demo­c­rat Bob Ferguson?

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 39%
• Unfa­vor­able: 35%
• Have not heard of Bob Fer­gu­son: 13%
• Not sure: 13%

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Repub­li­can Dave Reichert?

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 26%
• Unfa­vor­able: 32%
• Have not heard of Dave Reichert: 24%
• Not sure: 19%

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and its allies have been argu­ing that Fer­gu­son is unliked and unpop­u­lar, cit­ing research done by their poll­sters. But our new polling sug­gests it’s Reichert who has a favor­a­bil­i­ty deficit. A plu­ral­i­ty of respon­dents had an unfa­vor­able opin­ion of him and anoth­er quar­ter had­n’t heard of him. And many vot­ers may not like what they hear as the year goes on.

New cycle, old story

Reichert isn’t the first Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful to have relin­quished an ear­ly lead in pub­lic opin­ion research to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent. As I explained when we pub­lished our last poll find­ing in this race, the last time the gov­er­nor­ship of Wash­ing­ton was open, Repub­li­can AG Rob McKen­na jumped out to an ear­ly lead, only to be eclipsed by Jay Inslee short­ly before the vot­ing peri­od began. Inslee’s cam­paign put togeth­er a first-rate bio­graph­i­cal ad that turned the tables.

Inslee has been win­ning with Wash­ing­ton vot­ers ever since. He dis­patched McKen­na, cruised past Bill Bryant in 2016, and wal­loped Loren Culp in 2020.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates have a stel­lar, proven track record of clos­ing with vot­ers in guber­na­to­r­i­al races. Repub­li­cans, mean­while, have a his­to­ry of run­ning out of gas and falling short. That his­to­ry now extends back sev­er­al decades. Wash­ing­ton has­n’t vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for gov­er­nor since 1980, when John Spell­man was elect­ed. The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s win­ning streak in guber­na­to­r­i­al con­tests now goes back forty years. It’s is the longest such streak in the country.

Can Democ­rats keep it going this year? We won’t know till Novem­ber. Right now, though, it looks like Reichert’s cam­paign is run­ning into some head­winds while Fer­gu­son’s cam­paign is catch­ing a nice lit­tle tailwind.

We plan to poll this crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant race again once spring rolls around and anoth­er sea­son has elapsed. At that time, we’ll bring you anoth­er poll finding.