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Rossi Gains Ground on Murray in New Poll; Didier Hurts Rossi’s Chances.

2010 Election, Politics, That Washington   June 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm Camden Swita

GOP challenger Dino Rossi has gained ground on incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) over the past six weeks according to the latest Elway poll.

According to an earlier Elway poll, Rossi trailed Murray 34 percent to 51 percent at the beginning of May, but now trails by just 7 points—40 percent to 47 percent.

The poll also indicated that the upcoming race and election should be intensely partisan, with 89 percent of Democrats supporting Murray and 84 percent of Republicans supporting Rossi.

According to the poll, “Had this been a survey of just partisans, Murray would have had a 20 point lead (54 percent to 34 percent) because of the larger number of Democrats. But this is Washington, where Independents decide statewide elections because neither party on its own can elect  anyone.”

Rossi leads in independent support 45 percent to 32 percent, but he’ll need to win a much greater margin of that vote to pull off a win.

Undecided voters, Independents and a huge voter turnout, then, are the keys to Rossi’s potential success.

Although Murray is below 50 percent overall in this survey, Elway claims that in order for Rossi to win, he would need to convince 85 percent of undecided voters to vote for him, which is a stretch because incumbents have greater voter recognition, and if undecided voters were not going to vote for an incumbent they’d know it already.

Murray has an advantage over Rossi with voters who are most likely to turn out on election day, but the higher voter turn out, the more votes Rossi is likely to get.

This is probably the biggest reason why the leading Tea Party candidate Clint Didier will be a serious challenge to Rossi. In polls, Rossi leads Didier by a large margin, but the the insurgent sect of the Republican party is subtracting from the energy Rossi needs to generate in order to get additional voter turnout.




  • N8

    I wonder if a large number of democrats will vote for Didier in the primary in hopes that he either somehow beats Rossi or by hving a strong showing forces him to move rightward. Thoughts anyone?

  • morning

    Elway not the best – leans right.

    She is below 50%, not good for an incumbent.

  • Billy

    Wow talk about patty colored glasses!

    1. yet another poll confirms she's under 50 % — death warning sign for incumbents.

    2. Rossi in just five weeks goes from being 17 points down to just 7 points down? Man, he's on a roll. At this rate he'll be ahead of her in five more weeks.

    3. .Your statement about incumbents is flat wrong. “because incumbents have greater voter recognition, . . .if undecided voters were not going to vote for an incumbent they’d know it already.”
    Wrong, and backwards. IF voters aren't for an incumbent, one they already know, it means they ain't ever gonna be for that incumbent. That's typical campaign lore known to all.
    Even more strongly applying to a long term incumbent like Patty.

    4. math error. If election held today, Rossi can win if he merely gets 10 of those 13 points of undecideds (plus one more vote) and that's 77% not 85%. Call it 75, okay? So, in fact, Rossie needs only get 3 of 4 undecideds. Well that's not that hard. Typically undecideds break that way when it's a long term incumbent.

    And holy fucking shit, look at the previous poll, Rossi is picking up not only undecideds but he picked up four points of former patty murray supporters. hello! Campaign analysis central! When an incumbent moves from 51% down to 47 in just five weeks when her opponent merely launches — that's fucking bad news dude!

    Rossi 17 points behind five weeks ago now only seven — he made up
    ten freaking points in just five weeks — ain't no way to spin that but to say “Murray campaign begins cratering”!

    And yes I am pro Murray have volunteered hours for her but puhleeze take off the rose colored glasses. And btw the fact she doesn't have a message is what's killing her. Saying she's the mom in tennis shoes bringing home the earmarks and she's all powerful and shit right now is the totally wrong message right now. The message needs to speak to independents and if she doesn't take ownership of obama's big govt. programs and explain they're adding value she's gonna lose.

  • http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

    On a roughly equivalent date in 2006, pollster Strategic Vision gave Maria Cantwell a lead of 47%-43% over Mike! McGavick. Looking ahead to the 2008 gubernatorial race, they showed Dino Rossi leading Governor Gregoire 51%-39%.

    The farther out from the election, the better Rossi polls.

    Interestingly, that same poll also asked about the expected Democratic presidential nominee for 2008. Hillary Clinton led at 31%; the name Barack Obama did not appear.

    URL: http://www.strategicvision.biz/political/washin…

  • Mikos

    Elway's key point is about turnout. Rossi needs a good turnout because Murray wins among the most likely voters: older voters and retirees. Unfortunately for Rossi, most of the signs point to a low turnout year.

    Also, Rossi likely beats Didier but how much of a chunk will Didier take out of Rossi in the primary? Republicans have been going after each other with chainsaws this year. Plus, as Elway points out, Rossi still is not getting much more support than the “generic” Republican candidate. He has not track record of generating much excitement.

    It's all about Murray.

  • Jeff

    Why no mention of Paul Akers when he has a better poll than Didier? Paul does not speak in platitudes like the other two and does not quote the movie “Braveheart” in his speeches.

    http://www.akersforussenate.com/

  • misha

    Huh? Patty Murray wins with all those hippie liberal seniors and retirees? And Dino Rossi wins with the kids, who think it's “hip” to deport Mexicans and protect marriage from the gays?

  • N8

    How long ago did you volunteer for Murray and what were the circumstances (did your significant other wrangle you into it or did you have a boss to impress)? And your choice of four-lettered words and long, point-by-point weak rebuttal shows that you are probably easily persuaded by emotions as opposed to facts.

  • N8

    Good point, maybe because big media likes showering attention on the Palin-endorsed candidate.

  • TranspoGuy

    As N in Seattle points out below, a few points below 50 is not as terrible as it might seem for Murray, even more so when most voters know her opponent as well almost as well as they know her.

    Your point 3 is simply not supported by past election results in this state. Undecided voters quite often, even a majority of the time, settle on the incumbent as it gets closer to election day and they start paying attention to news coverage of the race and each side's propaganda. Therefore, getting 85% or 77% or 75% is undecided votes is actually a very difficult hurdle to overcome. I'm not saying it's impossible. A terrorist attack, a few major bank defaults, a monetary crisis, or unemployment numbers that get significantly worse between now and election day could pull the rug out from under Murray's re-election hopes. Without this sort of game changer, this poll and most of the others indicate that Rossi will do, at best, only slightly better against Murray than McGavick against Cantwell in 2006.

  • N8T

    Remember that Washington has a Top 2 primary, if a handful of Dems vote for Dedier, hence taking away votes from Murray they then risk Dedier and Rossi going through as the top 2.

  • Ken

    Billy, you make some excellent points. Tying herself too closely to Obama, though, is not going to save her. The Democrats who've done best so far are those who've put some distance between themselves and Obama.

  • Dave

    patty murray should be retired now. She has been in congress too long. I would vote against her this November. Term limits should be applied to all politicians. The longer that they are in there, the more corrupted they will become.

  • markvallance

    Spot on Dave. Fixed terms will replace the chaff and “Professional” politicans. Murray has outstayed her welcome. The pundits fail to acknowledge the fact that this year there is a clear anti incumbent feel in the air. We have already seen both Dems and GOP fail to win in primary elections. I think this year will be Dino Rossi's best shot and there is a lot of anti Murray people out there right now.

  • Portland observer

    While all three Republicans (Rossi, Didier, Akers) probably can beat Murray, it doesn't really matter. The Elway poll also shows that neither Akers or Didier have even a remote chance of making it to the general election in the first place. Didier is polling at 5 % and Akers is polling at 2% so it is basically going to be Rossi vs. Murray no matter what.

  • Progressive Prism

    Congrats on RedState.com linking to you this afternoon.

    http://www.redstate.com/neil_stevens/2010/06/21…

  • Dan

    I can't seem to find any polls for the Washington State Republican Primary. Perhaps, this is because Washington State is a top-2 state, sot here technical aren't any Party primaries. Still, I haven't found any polls on who these top two candidates would be.

    The thing is, as Murray's lead expands more and more voters in the middle (including moderate Republicans) are essentially pulled away from Rossi.

    If Murray could go from being 7 points ahead of Rossi (47-40) in these polls to 15 points, say 52-37….that means that the independents and moderate Republicans are supporting Murray, and now Rossi and Didier are competing for the super conservative base, the only people left.

    The Democratic Party DEFINATELY needs to take the WA, CA, and CT races off the table….as CA is a super liberal state, and it would exhaust much resources to help Boxer if she is behind, same thing for CT, and WA.

    If Murray can get 15+ points ahead in WA, and Boxer 15+ points ahead in CA, and the CT race, stays strongly Democrat favored, it will help the Democrats go after seats in NH, OH, FL, MO, etc….