Bob Ferguson widens lead over Dave Reichert in 2024 Washington gubernatorial race, NPI poll finds

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has slight­ly widened his lead over for­mer Repub­li­can Dave Reichert in Wash­ing­ton’s fierce­ly con­test­ed 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al race, a sur­vey con­duct­ed this week for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found. 

Asked on May 15th and 16th who they would vote for in a two-way race if the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion were being held today, 48% of 615 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers inter­viewed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI said they’d back Fer­gu­son, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic fron­trun­ner, while 42% said they would vote for Reichert, the Repub­li­can frontrunner. 

Anoth­er 10% were not sure.

This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive statewide sur­vey we’ve com­mis­sioned that’s found Fer­gu­son with a lead. After nar­row­ly trail­ing Reichert back in Novem­ber of last year, Fer­gu­son jumped out ahead of the for­mer Repub­li­can con­gress­man in Feb­ru­ary, open­ing up a four-point advan­tage. Now his lead has increased to six points. Mean­while, Reichert is hold­ing steady, gar­ner­ing the same per­cent­age he did back in the winter.

It has been twelve years since Wash­ing­ton last had an open guber­na­to­r­i­al race. Then, as now, the can­di­dates were a for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and an incum­bent Attor­ney Gen­er­al who’d run and won statewide mul­ti­ple times. The for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive was Demo­c­rat Jay Inslee, who resigned from Con­gress to focus on cam­paign­ing full time, and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al was Repub­li­can Rob McKenna. 

McKen­na led in ear­ly polling and was con­sid­ered the fron­trun­ner up until the begin­ning of sum­mer, when Inslee went up on the air­waves and began intro­duc­ing him­self (or, in some cas­es, rein­tro­duc­ing him­self) to vot­ers. A tele­vi­sion spot cre­at­ed by media strate­gist Frank Greer and GMMB swung the dynam­ics of the race in Inslee’s favor. He began lead­ing in many pub­lic polls and went on to defeat McKen­na, keep­ing the gov­er­nor’s man­sion in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands. Inslee was reelect­ed in 2016 and 2020.

Polit­i­cal his­to­ry seemed to be rhyming last autumn when our sea­son­al statewide sur­vey found Reichert with a slim lead in a hypo­thet­i­cal head-to-head matchup. How­ev­er, Reichert’s advan­tage was short-lived. By Feb­ru­ary, Reichert had fall­en behind Fer­gu­son, with few­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers express­ing a will­ing­ness to vote for him.

Our spring sur­vey sug­gests that Fer­gu­son is on a tra­jec­to­ry that could lead to a com­fort­able Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry this autumn. Fer­gu­son might not win in a land­slide — elec­toral his­to­ry shows that Repub­li­cans are more com­pet­i­tive when there’s no Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent run­ning — but he’s pulling away from Reichert even before going up on tele­vi­sion and oth­er media to intro­duce him­self and make his case. 

That’s a prob­lem for Reichert. 

Fer­gu­son’s cam­paign got plen­ty of pub­lic­i­ty right before our poll field­ed thanks to the incred­i­ble stu­pid­i­ty of a right wing Repub­li­can oper­a­tive named Glen Mor­gan, who decid­ed to inter­fere with Fer­gu­son’s can­di­da­cy by recruit­ing oth­er men named Robert Fer­gu­son to file for gov­er­nor. Those men both with­drew on Mon­day after learn­ing that Mor­gan had put them at risk of being charged with, and con­vict­ed of, a Class B felony.

Their exit put an end to Mor­gan’s scheme to split the vote for Fer­gu­son, but it did­n’t do much to win­now the field of can­di­dates. Twen­ty-six peo­ple are still in the race for gov­er­nor in addi­tion to Fer­gu­son and Reichert. Most of them haven’t raised any mon­ey or done much cam­paign­ing, and most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans prob­a­bly haven’t heard of them. 

How­ev­er, two of those twen­ty-six have been doing more cam­paign­ing and rais­ing more mon­ey than the oth­ers: ex-school board mem­ber Semi Bird, a Repub­li­can, and State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let, a Demo­c­rat. Bird and Mul­let met the cri­te­ria that we estab­lished for inclu­sion in our guber­na­to­r­i­al polling last year, and accord­ing­ly, in each of our sur­veys, we’ve includ­ed them in our Top Two guber­na­to­r­i­al ques­tion. The cri­te­ria are: 

• 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

Bird and Mul­let have each argued on many occa­sions that they have a path to the Novem­ber bal­lot. How­ev­er, our polling has con­sis­tent­ly indi­cat­ed that nei­ther of them is any­where close to their rivals. That was true at the end of spring last year, it was true last autumn, it was true this win­ter, and it’s true now:

• Mul­let is stuck at 4% — where he was in Feb­ru­ary — despite hav­ing spent a ton of mon­ey on tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing dur­ing the past few weeks. Those spots haven’t moved the nee­dle for him so much as one iota.
• Bird received 11%, 2% more than he received in Feb­ru­ary and 1% more than he received in Novem­ber and June of 2023. That’s the extent of his “con­ven­tion bounce” — he was endorsed by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty in April. 
• Reichert gained one point, going from 27% in Feb­ru­ary to 28%. Before that, he had slid four points between Novem­ber and Feb­ru­ary, while Fer­gu­son went the oth­er direc­tion, dis­solv­ing the 31% / 31% tie we saw in our autumn survey.
• Fer­gu­son, mean­while, stayed at 35% in our Top Two ques­tion. He has either led or been tied with Reichert in our Top Two ques­tion for the entire­ty of the cycle, since we began ask­ing vot­ers who they’d sup­port for gov­er­nor in 2024. 

The sea­sons may have changed, but Mul­let and Bird’s prospects haven’t. They’re still as bad as they were before. Nei­ther has as much name famil­iar­i­ty as their rivals. And, in this sur­vey, we dis­cov­ered that nei­ther Mul­let nor Bird is viewed favor­ably by most Wash­ing­ton vot­ers who have heard of them. Take a look: 

Candidate favorability findings

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Repub­li­can Semi Bird?

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 20%
• Unfa­vor­able: 31% 
• Have not heard of Semi Bird: 38%
• Not sure: 12%

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Demo­c­rat Mark Mullet?

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 16%
• Unfa­vor­able: 26%
• Have not heard of Mark Mul­let: 41%
• Not sure: 17% 

This is the first time we’ve asked respon­dents in one of our sur­veys about their opin­ion of Bird and Mul­let. In Feb­ru­ary, we asked respon­dents about their opin­ions of Fer­gu­son and Reichert. We found that Fer­gu­son had a slight­ly pos­i­tive spread (39% favor­able, 35% unfa­vor­able) and Reichert had a slight­ly neg­a­tive one (26% favor­able, 32% unfa­vor­able). This time around, we found that both fron­trun­ners are about even, with approx­i­mate­ly as many respon­dents offer­ing a favor­able opin­ion as an unfa­vor­able one:

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

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 30%
• Unfa­vor­able: 29%
• Have not heard of Dave Reichert: 23%
• Not sure: 18%

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

ANSWERS:

• Favor­able: 38%
• Unfa­vor­able: 39%
• Have not heard of Bob Fer­gu­son: 13%
• Not sure: 10%

It’s pos­si­ble the dynam­ics could change before vot­ing in the August Top Two elec­tion con­cludes. But it does­n’t seem like­ly. Mul­let and Bird have each been run­ning for around a year and have failed to gain any mean­ing­ful ground on Fer­gu­son and Reichert. As men­tioned, a recent spate of tele­vi­sion ads has­n’t done any­thing for Mark Mul­let and Semi Bird has­n’t seen a sig­nif­i­cant boost since becom­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s endorsed can­di­date. Both can­di­dates should take note that among vot­ers with an opin­ion, they are viewed more unfa­vor­ably than favorably.

Four-way toplines (August election)

Here are the four-way toplines again, and the exact ques­tion we asked:

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: 28%
• Semi Bird: 11%
• Mark Mul­let: 4%
• Not sure: 22%

This ques­tion appeared after all of the favor­a­bil­i­ty ques­tions shown above.

Like our oth­er statewide sur­veys this cycle, this was a poll of like­ly Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers, not August Top Two vot­ers. How­ev­er, Wash­ing­ton has a two-part gen­er­al elec­tion, with the first part being an elim­i­na­tion round that takes the place of the pri­ma­ry sys­tem that most oth­er states in the coun­try have, and the peo­ple who typ­i­cal­ly respond to sur­veys affirm­ing they’ll vote tend to be more fre­quent voters. 

To elab­o­rate a lit­tle more: 97% of respon­dents to this sur­vey said they were “cer­tain” to vote in Novem­ber and 3% said they “prob­a­bly” would — it’s a rea­son­able assump­tion that most of our poll tak­ers will also vote in August.

Two-way toplines (simulated November election)

We then asked respon­dents who they’d sup­port in a hypo­thet­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tion matchup between Fer­gu­son and Reichert. That is the matchup we believe the Top Two elec­tion results are most like­ly to yield in August. Here are the two-way toplines again, and the exact ques­tion that we asked the vot­ers who were interviewed: 

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: 48%
• Dave Reichert: 42%
• Not sure: 10%

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

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.

Interested in diving into the crosstabs with us?

If you’re inter­est­ed in the crosstabs of our guber­na­to­r­i­al 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. 

Stay tuned for another gubernatorial poll finding this summer

In July, we plan to go back into the field with our first-ever Top Two statewide poll. We’ve polled right before the Top Two before at the local lev­el, but not at the state lev­el. This year, we’ve cho­sen to add anoth­er sur­vey to our sea­son­al sched­ule to meet the demand for cred­i­ble, high-qual­i­ty data. This under­tak­ing requires that we expand our bud­get. In addi­tion to expand­ing our research, we’re also work­ing to cre­ate paid staff posi­tions at NPI to ensure that the essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy we do con­tin­ues. Rev­enue from The Chi­nook Bea­con will sup­port this capac­i­ty-build­ing work. Please become a sub­scriber! Note that The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate will remain avail­able to read at no charge and with no pay­wall, just as it has been for over twen­ty years.