Poll Watch: Early survey examines Washington’s 2020 gubernatorial landscape

Chism Strate­gies has released a sur­vey giv­ing prog­nos­ti­ca­tors an idea of what to expect in next year’s guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Wash­ing­ton State. The poll was con­duct­ed from March 8th to 10th among like­ly voters.

The poll finds that among Democ­rats, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has 24.6% sup­port – eclips­ing his clos­est rivals, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine (6.2%) and Pub­lic Land Com­mis­sion­er Hilary Franz (1.8%).

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son has made his name in recent years as a vocal oppo­nent of the Trump regime. He has con­sis­tent­ly crit­i­cized for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions, and defend­ed Washington’s grow­ing mar­i­jua­na indus­try against the failed war on drugs men­tal­i­ty still espoused by offi­cials at the fed­er­al level.

The poll found 46.3% sup­port for Repub­li­can Bill Bryant. Bryant isn’t cur­rent­ly run­ning, but since no high pro­file Repub­li­can has declared yet, the poll­ster sub­sti­tut­ed Bryant in as a ‘gener­ic’ Repub­li­can can­di­date. Bryant ran for gov­er­nor in 2016 and was wal­loped, los­ing by almost 9% to Jay Inslee.

Inslee was not includ­ed in the poll.

Although Wash­ing­ton has no term lim­its for gov­er­nor, Inslee has set his sights beyond Wash­ing­ton State. The two-term gov­er­nor announced his bid for the pres­i­den­cy on March 1st, and has put off mak­ing a deci­sion about seek­ing a third term as Washington’s chief exec­u­tive. His pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is express­ly focused on pro­tect­ing the plan­et; as he argued recent­ly on the Dai­ly Show, “you can’t solve oth­er prob­lems unless you solve cli­mate change”.

Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats have had great suc­cess in elect­ing gov­er­nors. The par­ty boasts the longest win­ning streak in guber­na­to­r­i­al races in the coun­try. Wash­ing­ton has not had a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor in office since 1985.

Of course, Bob Fer­gu­son is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a shoo-in; Wash­ing­ton uses a two-part gen­er­al elec­tion sys­tem that pits every can­di­date against each oth­er regard­less of par­ty affil­i­a­tion in the first round and allows the top two vote-win­ners to progress to the gen­er­al elec­tion – again, regard­less of their par­ty. This can result in unusu­al out­comes, like in 2016, when three Democ­rats run­ning for Trea­sur­er split the vote almost equal­ly, allow­ing two Repub­li­cans to advance to the runoff.

Still, the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that Fer­gu­son is favored to win if he runs.