Three new polls in the Washington Senate race show results ranging from an outside the margin lead for Dem Patty Murray, to a dead heat.
First up, SUSA:
Murray 47%, Rossi 47%, at the wire, and offered with circumspection given the disparate findings of 9 different pollsters attempting to characterize the race.
Republican Rossi has a nominal 2-point advantage among voters who tell SurveyUSA they have already returned a ballot. Democrat Murray has a nominal 2-point advantage among voters who tell SurveyUSA they promise to mail back the ballot but have not yet done so. When the 2 groups are combined: tie game. Metro Seattle (which, as always, includes Pierce, Snohomish and King counties) breaks 6:5 Democrat. Eastern WA breaks 4:3 Republican. Western WA breaks 8:7 Republican. Women appear to give Rossi another look at the finish line. Murray's advantage among female voters had been as high as 17 points, now 6. Lower-income voters are 5:4 for Murray. Middle-income voters split. Upper-income voters are 8:7 for Rossi.
SUSA still has what appears to me to be a pretty questionable voter screen for Metro Seattle, particularly when you look at the primary results here. Again, it's a top-two primary, with all candidates listed on the same ballot. So essentially, Murray and Rossi went head-to-head. Looking at those results, a 51-42 lead for Murray still seems way too cautious on behalf of Rossi. She won Metro Seattle in the August primary with almost 59 percent of the vote to Rossi's 36. Even if you gave Rossi every single Didier (the teabagger who got the next highest percentage) vote cast in the three counties in the metro area in the primary, she would lead in these three counties 57-42. So Rossi's 42 ceiling in the metro area makes sense, but SUSA seems to be assuming that a big chunk of Murray's voters who cast votes in the August primary aren't going to vote again next week. Since this accounts for roughly half the votes state-wide, you could comfortably give Murray a 3 point bump from SUSA state-wide numbers.
Then there's Rasmussen, which has Rossi ahead by one point, 47-48. Rasmussen has had the lead flipping between candidates consistently over the last several months, "and they've been within two points of each other nine times. Murray's support has ranged from 45% to 51%, while Rossi has picked up 46% to 49% of the vote."
Finally, a state-based poll, KCTS-9/KPLU/Washington Poll, which gives Murray a 51-45 lead among likely voters:
In the earlier KCTS 9/KPLU/Washington poll, conducted a few weeks ago, Murray had an 8-point lead over her Republican challenger Dino Rossi.
In the newest poll, that lead is cut in half. It shows Murray with 49 percent of the vote to 45 percent for Rossi. The margin of error is 4.3 percent percent.
But, University of Washington pollster Matt Barreto says if you just look at the people who are likely to vote, people who voted in the last two elections, the numbers are more favorable to Murray. She garners 51 percent to Rossi's 45 percent.
"Patty Murray appears to be ahead in this contest. I think you're gonna see that play out on election night. On election night, she may have a 4-point lead that could end up expanding as more ballots come in from King county and the Puget Sound Area," Barreto said.
One thing the University of Washington political science professor noticed in his poll results is that, unlike in many states, in Washington Democrats seem more enthusiastic about voting than tea party loyalists. The Puget Sound area is overwhelmingly made up of Democrats.
That's the metro area that SUSA has Murray winning narrowly, and it's voting at what could be record-setting rate for a midterm election: "King County has already received over 300,000 ballots, compared to 196,000 at the same point in the runup to election day in 2009 when 574,000 people cast ballots. If these numbers continue, turnout could hit 750,000 out of the 1.1 million registered voters."
The Washington Poll has Murray with a 58-35 lead in the Puget Sound area, a much more believable number than SUSA's.
Which is not to say that this race hasn't tightened after the fairly substantial lead that Murray had a month ago. But it's notable that the Washington Poll found the same thing that PPP found in it's poll for us in WA-08--a lack of a Dem enthusiasm gap. Democrats that are more excited to vote than teabaggers (whose Senate candidate Clint Didier still has not endorsed Rossi) will likely carry Murray on Tuesday (or however long it takes to get all the votes counted).