Rep. Jay Inslee
SurveyUSA for KING-TV. 1/12-16. MoE ±4%. Registered voters (
11/21-23 results):
Jay Inslee (D): 43 (38)
Rob McKenna (R): 46 (44)
Undecided: 11 (17)
The bimonthly poll of the Washington Governor's race from SurveyUSA shows some improvement for Democratic Rep. Jay Inslee, who has trailed by low- to mid-single digits in most polls of the race so far. While the previous SUSA poll from November showed absolutely no movement at all by either candidate since September, this one sees some of the undecideds coming off the fence, and the majority of them have broken in Inslee's direction. That brings him within 3 points of Republican AG Rob McKenna. Of course, that's all well within the margin of error and the change might mean nothing, but it seems consistent with
PPP's observations on this race last year, which were that most of the undecideds were Democratic leaners and would likely break toward Inslee.
Two things Inslee needs to fix are that a) he's not retaining as many Dems (83% will vote for him) as McKenna retains Republicans (91%)... and, perhaps relatedly, b) he trails McKenna 40-35 on who people trust more on the issue of "education," which should be a Democratic strength. (Inslee leads on social issues and the environment, the latter of which is his main rhetorical focus.) Education has really been one of McKenna's key talking points, and while people are probably attracted to his glib promises to spend more on it, there hasn't been much calling him out on what else he'd cut to pay for that (and also that much of what he wants to implement involves anti-teacher "ed reform"/Gates Foundation-type fixes).