WA-03: Political science professor Carolyn Long has released a new poll aimed at showing that Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who's never faced a tough re-election fight after redistricting made her seat redder in 2012, could be in for exactly that this fall. The survey, from Lake Research, gives Herrera Beutler a 49-29 lead, but, the memo explains, that narrows to 45-41 after "positive profiles of both candidates and two short messages" were read to respondents. (Those messages were likely negative ones about the incumbent, especially since the campaign "declined to provide the polling language" to The Daily News, a newspaper based in southwestern Washington.)
Usually we look askance at informed ballot questions, since they reflect a Platonic ideal that can never be achieved in the world of actual campaigns, but here, the numbers might be instructive. That's because Herrera Beutler's large margin on the initial test is unquestionably due to her far greater name recognition. While we would have preferred to see a follow-up question after only bios (and nothing else) were read, the results do at least suggest that Long can close the gap if she can get her name out there.
First, though, she'd need to get past fellow Democrat David McDevitt in the August top-two primary. McDevitt ran for this seat last cycle but raised just $33,000 and failed to make it out of the primary, taking just 10 percent of the vote. His fundraising is very weak once again, but this time he's loaned himself $300,000. Long, by contrast, took in $40,000 in December, her first month in the race.
Herrera Beutler, meanwhile, may not be taking her re-election prospects as seriously as perhaps she ought to. She raised only $167,000 in the fourth quarter of last year and had $515,000 in the bank, both relatively soft figures for an incumbent. Normally, that might be fine, but 2018 is shaping up to be anything but a normal year, and lots of Republicans who aren't used to competitive challenges will get them this year.
On the presidential level, Washington's 3rd District moved toward the Republicans in the last election, voting for Donald Trump 50-43 after giving Mitt Romney a much narrower 50-48 win. That's unsurprising: The district comprises the northern exurbs of Portland, Oregon and rural white working-class areas that were once home to a good deal of logging and fishing. However, we've seen many districts like this one bounce back toward Democrats in special elections, and indeed, Barack Obama actually carried this seat in 2008, 51-47 (and yes, that's under the lines that were redrawn in redistricting). Either Long or McDevitt still have a lot to prove, but this race could definitely come into play.