WA voters are sticking with party lines and paying attention

Governor’s race 

The poll also looked at statewide elections including the governor’s race, but not much has changed since the last Cascade PBS/Elway poll from September. Of those polled in October, Democrat Bob Ferguson led 51% to Reichert’s 37%. In September, Ferguson led Reichert 50% to 39%. 

While 72% of respondents said the choice was clear between the candidates, 10% said it was a hard choice between “not very good” candidates and 6% said it was a hard choice between two good candidates.

The poll revealed some interesting surprises about voting preferences this election cycle. 

Carl Pierce, a 56-year-old real estate asset manager who lives in Black Diamond, said he is a registered Democrat voting for Harris and Reichert this year. Pierce said he pays attention to the news every day through outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other local news outlets, and believes that Harris “is very qualified based on her experience as an attorney general in the state of California, a senator from California and vice president.”

“I also feel like she will respect the Constitution and she will not try to destroy our republic,” Pierce added. 

As someone who manages some large real estate investments in Seattle’s downtown area, however, Pierce said he feels like crime and open drug use have “gotten out of hand” while Ferguson was attorney general, and said he will be voting for the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

“I just feel like Dave Reichert would bring a more sensible, moderate approach to handling crime in some of the major cities in the state,” he said. 

While Pierce is undecided on the attorney general race, his answers to the poll showed that he will be supporting Democrat Upthegrove in the lands commissioner race.

Democrats polled at 92% support for Ferguson, while only 74% of Democratic-voting independents said they supported Ferguson. Reichert’s support from base Republicans and Republican-voting independents polled at 89%. Reichert led with support from true independents with 30% compared to Ferguson’s 19%. 

Party and philosophy ranked high as a reason to vote for both candidates: 19% cited party and philosophy as a reason to vote for Ferguson while 17% cited party and philosophy as a reason to vote for Reichert. For Ferguson, 17% cited his experience and job performance as a reason, while 10% said the same for Reichert. And Reichert appears to be slightly more popular than Ferguson, with 14% of likely voters saying they “don’t like him” about Ferguson compared to 6% saying they don’t like Reichert. 

Attorney General race

Attorney general results come from 339 interviews instead of 401 due to a mislabeling error for the first 64 interviews. The margin of error for this question is ±5.3% instead of ±5.0% like all other questions in the poll. 

Democrat Nick Brown leads in what appears to be a party-line election, with 47% of polled voters saying they would vote for Brown over Pete Serrano, who polled at 29%. Of those, 79% of base Democrats said they would vote for Brown and 66% of Democrat-voting independents said the same. For Serrano, 82% of base Republicans said they would vote for him, with 67% of Republican-voting independents saying the same. 

Stuart Elway noted that Serrano has a long-shot chance as 24% of those polled still remain undecided and Brown is still polling under 50%, but said that 18% is still a “big gap to close.” 

Lands Commissioner race

The closest of the races polled this month is the lands commissioner race, with 41% voting for Democrat Dave Upthegrove, 35% voting for Jaime Herrera Beutler and 24% still undecided. 

Poll results show that support for Herrera Beutler has more unified party support, with 82% of base Republicans and 78% of Republican-voting independents saying they would vote for her. Upthegrove’s support was not as strong, with only 72% of base Democrats and 50% of Democrat-voting independents saying they would vote for him.

Among true independents, Herrera Beutler led with 30% over Upthegrove’s 15%.

Some voters polled said they are making different choices this year. 

A 30-year-old oncology nurse who did not want her name printed due to fear of retaliation in her profession told Cascade PBS that while she considers herself an independent, she is voting for all Democratic candidates this election year to make a statement based on what she has seen in health care. 

During her career, she has seen the direct impact of having to tell patients day-to-day that a hospital no longer offered Death with Dignity care or ectopic pregnancy care after it was bought out by one of the many Catholic health care systems in Washington.

“Health care access is a huge concern of mine,” she said. “Abortion rights is a really big issue of mine because it doesn’t just affect a small population of people who are financially unable to care for a child and that’s their main concern. It affects much wider than that.”  

The latest Cascade PBS/Elway poll also looked at responses to the initiatives, and that information can be found here. 

The last day to turn in ballots for the general election is Nov. 5. 

CORRECTION: This version corrects the section about the popularity of the gubernatorial candidates to clarify that those answers came from all the people polled, not the individual candidates’ supporters.