Joe Biden’s 2024 lead over Donald Trump in Washington State rebounds to sixteen points

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has slight­ly widened his lead over pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump in the Ever­green State with eight months to go until bal­lots get mailed out to in-state vot­ers, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est sur­vey of the like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton elec­torate has found.

54% of 789 like­ly vot­ers sur­veyed Feb­ru­ary 13th-14th, 2024 by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute said they would vote for Biden if the elec­tion were being held today, while 38% said they would vote for Trump. Anoth­er 8% were not sure. It’s Biden’s best per­cent­age so far this cycle in our Wash­ing­ton State polling — bet­ter than the 53% he got last June, and bet­ter than the 52% Biden got in Novem­ber in head-to-head matchups with Trump.

The Ever­green State has been a Demo­c­ra­t­ic bas­tion for a rather long time. It last vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for Pres­i­dent in the 1980s, when Ronald Rea­gan was the Grand Old Par­ty’s nom­i­nee. Since then, it has vot­ed for Democ­rats, often by fair­ly lop­sided mar­gins. Michael Dukakis, Bill Clin­ton, Al Gore, John Ker­ry, Barack Oba­ma, and Hillary Clin­ton all won Wash­ing­ton State, as did the Biden-Har­ris tick­et four years ago. And no cred­i­ble polit­i­cal observ­er expects that to change.

Wash­ing­ton may not be a bat­tle­ground state, but that has nev­er stopped us from ask­ing peo­ple who they’re sup­port­ing for Pres­i­dent. It’s use­ful, fas­ci­nat­ing data to have, and we’re glad to be able to share it pub­licly with you, our readers.

Here’s the exact text of the ques­tions we asked and the responses:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS:

• Joe Biden: 54%
• Don­ald Trump: 38%
• Not sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 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 +/- 3.5% 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.

Insights from our crosstabs

Because we ask our respon­dents who they sup­port­ed in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, we always have 2020 pres­i­den­tial vote crosstabs avail­able to look at. As you might expect, pret­ty much every­one who vot­ed for Biden last time is pre­pared to do so again, and the same is true for Trump voters.

How­ev­er, we noticed that in this sur­vey, there are more Biden vot­ers will­ing to stick with Biden than Trump vot­ers will­ing to stick with Trump, and that Trump has an advan­tage among those who vot­ed for some­one else or did not vote.

Take a look:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS BY 2020 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE:

• 2020 Biden voters 
  • Joe Biden: 92%
  • Don­ald Trump: 2%
  • Not sure: 6%
• 2020 Trump voters 
  • Joe Biden: 4%
  • Don­ald Trump: 90%
  • Not sure: 6%
• Some­one else / did not vote 
  • Joe Biden: 16%
  • Don­ald Trump: 46%
  • Not sure: 38%

With respect to par­ty, Democ­rats are more unit­ed behind Biden than Repub­li­cans are for Trump. 93% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are back­ing Biden, where­as only 89% of Repub­li­can vot­ers are. Self-iden­ti­fied inde­pen­dents are about even­ly split: 41% for Biden, 42% for Trump, and 17% are not sure.

And, in more good news for Biden, Wash­ing­ton’s youngest vot­ers still sup­port his reelec­tion by about a 2:1 mar­gin, despite his han­dling of the con­flict between Israel and Hamas in the Mid­dle East. 66% of respon­dents ages eigh­teen to twen­ty-nine are for Biden and 34% are for Trump, with none unde­cid­ed — the only age group that did­n’t have a “not sure” response in this poll.

Biden does about as well with seniors: 62% of those above the age of six­ty-five are in Biden’s camp and only 32% pre­fer Trump. Trump’s strongest age group are Gen Xers and younger boomers, but even a plu­ral­i­ty of them pre­fer Biden.

In a sig­nif­i­cant diver­gence from our last sur­vey, we also found Pres­i­dent Biden with a lead among vot­ers with only a high school education.

In our Novem­ber poll, Trump had a ten point advan­tage, with 49% sup­port among that group. But in this poll, he’s at 45% and Biden has a plu­ral­i­ty lead of 48%, with 7% unde­cid­ed. Biden also has a nar­row lead over Trump among vot­ers who’ve tak­en some col­lege cours­es but did not fin­ish (47% to 45%) and those with two-year degrees (48% to 42%). Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Biden’s sup­port is in the six­ties with vot­ers who have four-year degrees (62% to Trump’s 30%) and among vot­ers with post­grad­u­ate degrees (69% to Trump’s 22%).

As before, Biden leads in all geo­graph­ic regions of Wash­ing­ton State except for East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, where Trump has major­i­ty support.

Biden also has a lead with vot­ers in every income brack­et in our survey.

Trump’s strength with Republican voters nationally could be helping President Biden and Democrats locally

Don­ald Trump has won nom­i­nat­ing con­tests in each of the states that has held a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry or cau­cus thus far, and now appears head­ed for a third con­sec­u­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion this sum­mer. But his strength with Repub­li­can vot­ers seems to be work­ing to Pres­i­dent Biden’s advan­tage, at least here in Wash­ing­ton State, as his over­all sup­port is going up and he’s doing much bet­ter with a key con­stituen­cy — vot­ers with only a high school education.

Many in state Repub­li­can cir­cles des­per­ate­ly want to define the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial and guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions on their terms, and they’re hop­ing a slate of six ini­tia­tives fund­ed by megadonor Bri­an Hey­wood will help them do it.

But with Trump promis­ing to be a dic­ta­tor on day one and encour­ag­ing Rus­sia to do what­ev­er it wants to Amer­i­ca’s NATO allies, the 2024 elec­tion is pret­ty much guar­an­teed to be anoth­er bat­tle for the soul of the nation. Repub­li­cans appear stuck with Trump, and NPI has over half a decade of state and local polling that makes it abun­dant­ly clear Trump and his pol­i­tics are utter­ly abhor­rent to a major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State. Trump’s pres­ence atop the tick­et is like­ly to be a seri­ous prob­lem for Repub­li­cans run­ning down­bal­lot this year.

When spring rolls around, we’ll check in again and see where the race stands. Between now and then, we’ll get some data from Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry — a unique event in state pol­i­tics that only hap­pens every four years — and that will give us more num­bers to exam­ine as the con­ven­tions approach.