A plurality of Washington voters are not sure who they want to vote for in the contest for Attorney General, NPI poll finds

Fil­ing Week has come and gone with­out bring­ing any increase in the num­ber of can­di­dates run­ning to be Wash­ing­ton State’s next Attor­ney Gen­er­al, but even so, the race remains wide open, at least on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side. That’s the take­away from our lat­est sur­vey of like­ly vot­ers, which field­ed last week and found a plu­ral­i­ty of respon­dents not sure about their choic­es in the con­test for the state’s top law enforce­ment job.

Asked who they’d sup­port for Attor­ney Gen­er­al if the elec­tion were being held today, 45% said they were not sure. 36% said they would vote for Repub­li­can Pete Ser­ra­no, the only Repub­li­can who filed. 10% said they would vote for Demo­c­rat Man­ka Dhin­gra, a state sen­a­tor from the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict and a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber. 9% said they would vote for Demo­c­rat Nick Brown, a for­mer U.S. Attor­ney for West­ern Wash­ing­ton who is now a lit­i­ga­tion part­ner at Paci­fi­ca Law Group.

This isn’t the first time we’ve found Brown and Dhin­gra tied: our Novem­ber sur­vey had them right next to each oth­er as well, with Dhin­gra at 14% and Brown at 13%. Ser­ra­no was­n’t a declared can­di­date then, so that poll asked about a hypo­thet­i­cal Repub­li­can can­di­date, Paul Graves, who received 38%. 34% said they were not sure.

But it’s a dif­fer­ent dynam­ic than what we saw in our Feb­ru­ary sur­vey. In that poll, Brown jumped out ahead of Dhin­gra, open­ing up a sev­en-point advan­tage. That lead is com­plete­ly gone, and what’s more, the num­ber of vot­ers who say they’re unde­cid­ed has increased and is high­er than what we saw either in Feb­ru­ary or November. 

It’s a good reminder that this is a low­er salience down­bal­lot race. And that Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers have an impor­tant choice to make this sum­mer. Unlike Repub­li­can vot­ers, they have more than one can­di­date who aligns with their val­ues and desired pol­i­cy direc­tions. They can’t sim­ply go with the Demo­c­rat because there’s more than one Demo­c­rat. So, it’s not sur­pris­ing that 60% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers told us they were not sure. 

Inde­pen­dent vot­ers are large­ly in the same boat: 50% of them aren’t sure, either. 

With few­er peo­ple hav­ing picked a can­di­date for Attor­ney Gen­er­al, the per­cent­ages that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates are receiv­ing are more sus­cep­ti­ble to noise in our polling. Recall that the Feb­ru­ary find­ing had Dhin­gra and Brown in the teens. Con­trast that with the gov­er­nor’s race, where there’s been a big gulf between Democ­rats Bob Fer­gu­son and Mark Mul­let for an entire year (June, Novem­ber, Feb­ru­ary, and now May).

It’s also use­ful to remem­ber that all polls are snap­shots in time. They don’t and can’t pre­dict the future. At best, they sug­gest what could be happening. 

No oth­er orga­ni­za­tion pub­licly polls down­bal­lot races such as Attor­ney Gen­er­al like NPI does — at least not this far before the elec­tion. We ask main­ly because we like hav­ing data to com­pare our home­stretch find­ings to. Hav­ing polled sea­son­al­ly over the course of an entire cycle gives us a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how a con­test unfolded. 

Pete Ser­ra­no has no Repub­li­can com­pe­ti­tion, so he’s got the Repub­li­can vote nailed down. He’ll get to the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. But the oth­er spot appears to be up for grabs. At this junc­ture, we can’t say that either Demo­c­rat is the frontrunner. 

Here’s the exact ques­tion that we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Wash­ing­ton State were being held today, would you vote for Repub­li­can Pete Ser­ra­no, Demo­c­rat Nick Brown, or Demo­c­rat Man­ka Dhingra?

ANSWERS:

• Repub­li­can Pete Ser­ra­no: 36% (+1% since February)
• Demo­c­rat Man­ka Dhin­gra: 10% (-2% since February)
• Demo­c­rat Nick Brown: 9% (-10% since February)
• Not sure: 45% (+11% since February)

Our sur­vey of 615 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, May 15th until Thurs­day, May 16th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (45%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (55%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.0% 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.

These sur­vey results aren’t the only avail­able evi­dence that this is a close­ly con­test­ed race that’s giv­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers and pro­gres­sive con­stituen­cies lots to think about. A cou­ple days after this poll fin­ished field­ing, the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil held its annu­al Com­mit­tee on Polit­i­cal Edu­ca­tion (COPE) Con­ven­tion in Seat­tle. At COPE 2024, del­e­gates decid­ed to endorse both Nick Brown and Man­ka Dhin­gra for this posi­tion. It’s the only statewide race for which they resolved to make a dual endorsement. 

On the fundrais­ing front, Brown’s cam­paign points out that he has raised more mon­ey than Dhin­gra: $1,004,038.43 as of when this post was writ­ten, com­pared to Dhin­gra’s $691,778.76. It should be not­ed that Dhin­gra could­n’t raise mon­ey dur­ing a three-month peri­od that began in Decem­ber, a month before the leg­isla­tive ses­sion, and end­ed after the House and Sen­ate adjourned Sine Die. She was legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from doing so by the state’s elec­tions code. Brown does­n’t hold a state-lev­el office, so that pro­hi­bi­tion did not apply to him. He was able to raise mon­ey all win­ter long. 

And while receipts are impor­tant, they’re not the only fis­cal met­ric. How a can­di­date spends their mon­ey is of para­mount impor­tance, and also when they spend it. A cam­paign at an over­all finan­cial dis­ad­van­tage can get excel­lent results by spend­ing their resources more effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly than their competition. 

So far, Brown has report­ed $367,246.09 in expen­di­tures. Dhin­gra has report­ed $428,697.32 in expen­di­tures. Despite hav­ing raised less than Brown, she’s spent more.

Interested in diving into the crosstabs with us?

If you’re inter­est­ed in the crosstabs of our AG polling — past and present — we invite you to sub­scribe to The Chi­nook Bea­con, NPI’s newest pub­li­ca­tion and The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate’s youngest sib­ling. The Bea­con, which just launched this week, is a newslet­ter avail­able exclu­sive­ly to pay­ing sub­scribers that pro­vides deep insights from our research as well as com­men­tary on elec­toral and polit­i­cal trends. Sub­scrip­tions cost $20/month or $240/year, and you can also become a Found­ing Mem­ber for $600/year.

We expect to pub­lish new edi­tions of The Bea­con every oth­er week through Novem­ber. After that, the pub­li­ca­tion sched­ule will like­ly go to twice a month.

Two months until voting begins and our next statewide poll fields

In the next few weeks, we’ll see how Brown and Dhin­gra invest the remain­ing funds they’ve raised. Their choic­es will be piv­otal in deter­min­ing the fates of their cam­paigns. Only one of them will get to move on to the gen­er­al elec­tion and face Pete Ser­ra­no and they both know it. The sprint to the August Top Two elec­tion is on.