Senator Maria Cantwell widens lead over Republican rival Raul Garcia to sixteen points

Democ­rats in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate face a tough map to keep con­trol of Con­gress’ upper cham­ber this autumn, with twen­ty-three seats to defend, but one state they prob­a­bly don’t have to wor­ry about hold­ing is Wash­ing­ton, where Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell’s path to reelec­tion appears to be get­ting even easier.

53% of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers sur­veyed last week for NPI said they would sup­port Cantwell if the elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate were being held now. 37% said they would sup­port Gar­cia, Cantwell’s expect­ed Repub­li­can gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent. Anoth­er 10% were not sure.

That six­teen point advan­tage is the biggest spread we’ve found for Sen­a­tor Cantwell so far this cycle, and it’s sev­en points wider than the spread between Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley that we found two years ago… a poll that the NRSC liked so much, they put out a press release tout­ing it. (I rather doubt they’ll be pro­mot­ing this finding.)

Cantwell’s only tight race thus far as a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor was her first, when she top­pled Slade Gor­ton in 2000 in a close con­test. She was reelect­ed eas­i­ly in 2006, 2012, and 2018, all wave years for Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton State.

In the Sen­ate, Cantwell has focused on envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, reg­u­lat­ing deriv­a­tives and oth­er com­plex finan­cial instru­ments, and strength­en­ing the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture. She is a key archi­tect of the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act, and cur­rent­ly chairs the pow­er­ful Com­merce Com­mit­tee. Her office often orga­nizes events to bring togeth­er sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists, and busi­ness lead­ers to dis­cuss issues like space explo­ration or arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI).

Sen­a­tor Cantwell is known for being one of the few in the Sen­ate who real­ly under­stands tech­nol­o­gy issues, along with Ore­gon’s Ron Wyden; the duo stood strong against harm­ful bills like SOPA and PIPA ear­ly on. Fit­ting­ly, she is one of the first elect­ed offi­cials ever to have guest post­ed on NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia, who was run­ning for gov­er­nor until he yield­ed to Dave Reichert, is like­ly to be Cantwell’s gen­er­al elec­tion opponent.

Gar­cia has the back­ing of a lot of promi­nent Repub­li­cans: leg­endary for­mer Gov­er­nor Dan Evans, Dino Rossi, Rob McKen­na, Sam Reed, Ralph Munro, and of course Reichert. Dozens of Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors and local elect­ed offi­cials have also endorsed him. But although Gar­cia has man­aged to get the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ra­tus to coa­lesce around his cam­paign, he’s not gen­er­at­ing the sort of buzz or media inter­est that Tiffany Smi­ley did last cycle.

Nor is Gar­cia rais­ing much mon­ey. He has so far raised a mere $244,241.96, which is utter­ly dwarfed by Cantwell’s $9+ mil­lion in receipts. Repub­li­cans are not excit­ed­ly tout­ing him as the can­di­date who will end Sen­a­tor Cantwell’s run in the Sen­ate. Part­ly that’s because the par­ty seems to have oth­er pri­or­i­ties, like elect­ing Reichert or pass­ing Bri­an Hey­wood and Jim Wal­sh’s slate of initiatives.

That’s a dynam­ic Democ­rats are hap­py to accept.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es 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: 53% (+2% since November)
• Raul Gar­cia: 37% (-1% since November)
• Not sure: 10% (-1% since November)

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 the crosstabs

Vot­ers who iden­ti­fy as female are par­tic­u­lar­ly enthu­si­as­tic about Cantwell’s reelec­tion — 65% of them pre­fer her, while only 26% pre­fer Garcia.

Among vot­ers of col­or, Cantwell also has an advan­tage. 63% of them pre­fer Cantwell, while only 22% would vote for Garcia.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are almost uni­form­ly behind Cantwell. 92% of self-iden­ti­fied Democ­rats want Cantwell, while 88% of self-iden­ti­fied Repub­li­cans back Gar­cia. Inde­pen­dents, mean­while, are split between Cantwell and Garcia.

With respect to age, the youngest and old­est vot­ers in the elec­torate are Cantwell’s strongest groups, just as they are for Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

The trend so far this cycle, visualized

Below you can see all of our pre­vi­ous find­ings for this con­test plotted.

More U.S. Senate polling to come

We plan to poll this race again in the spring­time, after Fil­ing Week, and we’ll see where the con­test stands at that time.