SurveyUSA has come out with their July poll in the Washington state gubernatorial contest. The poll shows Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) leading challenger Dino Rossi (GOP-Party) 49% to 46%. The poll of 666 people was taken from July 13th to July 15th.
The new poll follows the release of two other polls within the last week. A few days ago, Moore Information released a poll in this race that was taken from July 9 to July 10. It showed Gregoire and Rossi tied at 45%. The Moore Information poll was paid for by the Rossi campaign.
Last Friday, a poll was released by Rasmussen Reports, showing Gregoire leading Rossi, 49% to 43%. That poll was taken on July 9th. Gregoire led Rossi by single digit margins in all three June polls, including last month’s SurveyUSA poll that gave Gregoire a +3% advantage.
I’ll offer two Monte Carlo analyses using the new poll. First is an analysis of the poll numbers in the new SurveyUSA in order to estimate the probability that Gregoire (and Rossi) would win an election held right now. I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 666 voters each, where each voter had a 49% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 46% chance of voting for Rossi and a 5% chance of voting for neither.
Gregoire won 780,736 of the simulated elections and Rossi won 11,542 times. This suggests that, in an election now, Gregoire would have a 79% probability of winning and Rossi would have a 21% probability of winning. A statistician would point out that Gregoire’s lead in this poll is within the margin of error (i.e. her probability of winning is less than 95%).
Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections (blue bars are wins for Gregoire and red bars are Rossi wins):
The second analysis combines the polls from Rasmussen Reports, Moore Information, and SurveyUSA. Since the combined responses were all taken within one week, from July 9th through the 15th, we could look at the combined polls as the best evidence available for who would win the election now.
The combined polls yield a pool of 1,565 polled people, of whom 751 (48.0%) voted for Gregoire, 703 (44.9%) who voted for Rossi, and 111 (7.1%) who voted for neither. Again, I simulate 1,000,000 elections, this time with 1,565 people.
Gregoire won 893,646 of the simulated elections and Rossi won 101,700 times. The results suggest that, if an election were held now, Gregoire would win with an 89.9% probability, and Rossi would win with a 10.2% probability.
Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections for the combined polls:
SurveyUSA also polled for the presidential election in Washington state. Sen. Barack Obama (D) leads Sen. John McCain (R) 55% to 39%. Obama’s lead is well outside the 3.9% margin of error for the poll.
(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)
Survey USA is the devil?
Gregoire cannot dodge the Fiscal Trainwreck she created by excessive spending, 8000+ new employees and new or more costly programs.
Bottom-line under Gregoire–
Spending UP 35%
Revenue UP 18%
A 39-year career government bureaucrat, SHE created this catastrophe and will now try to blame it all on Bush. She has no plan on how to fix it other than we’ll address it later.
She has 2 choices:
1) Cut spending—which expenses?
2) Raise Taxes—which ones.
She is deafeningly silent because she doesn’t know what to do.
Rossi will soon take the lead.
2 – Uhhh. Is this sounding just a little like history repeating itself?
As in the…
Election contest?!?
LOL..
Re: the recent NYT poll…
Who knew there was a racial divide in the USA, huh?
2 Cyn
I’m amazed that your 24/7 touting of Rossi and spewing of non-facts are having no effect on the race.
But here:
The next governor has 2 choices. What will Dino Rossi do?
1) Cut spending—which expenses?
2) Raise Taxes—which ones?
Talk about “deafeningly silent.” When he’s not lowballing cost estimates for his crackpot projects he’s got nothing to say.
Did you read about Rossi’s 520 plan, which at eight lanes he projects will cost half a billion dollars less than the state’s six-lane project? Turns out he uses constant 2007 dollars while the state uses “year-of-expenditure” figures that include estimated inflation during construction.
Rossi doesn’t want to “lead,” he wants to MIS-lead. But how else can a Republican hope to get elected here, after all?
He’ll be at the head of the unemployment line, no doubt. Bu give us the date he’ll take the lead, will you? That makes it more fun.
DL spews:
“The next governor has 2 choices. What will Dino Rossi do?
1) Cut spending—which expenses?
2) Raise Taxes—which ones?”
DL, your gal CREATED the problem. It happened on HER watch. Ladies first. What is the person who created the upcoming deficit situation going to do about it????
Her response is we’ll worry about it later.
Not very much leadership and SHE is in the leadership position DL!
I’m telling you, this issue will plague her.
SHE increased spending 35% while revenues increased 18%. SHE added 8000+ new State Employees.
Also, SHE failed to call an emergency session to deal with this NOW….spending & hiring freezes etc.
Seems like she must be in a daze.
SHE has a record to run against.
That’s what happens in Election Contests DL.
It’s a friggin’ CONTEST!
Gregoire is being held ACCOUNTABLE.
Why would SHE & you care about Rossi’s plan.
He cannot do anything…yet.
The fact that SHE has no PLAN to address this fiscal trainwreck is even more telling.
Good luck DL on trying to continue to dodge the upcoming Deficit.
I look forward to HER plan!
Rog–
Congrats–
BOOM & NOV both DOWN over 3.1%!!
You are the only mammal to lose money in the Market today!
You need to open those floppy ears rather than think you know it all….know what I mean?
GBS–
Any moves today?
I am sitting with dry powder…watching JRCC again.
I’ll be voting for Rossi if Gregoire’s Pet, Paula Hammond, keeps Light Rail off the ballot this year.
Andrew,
Are you referring to former state Sen. Dino Rossi, who once sponsored a bill to eliminate Sound Transit and light rail?
That same guy who refused to publicly take a stand on Prop. One?
The same Rossi whose transportation fantasy plan proposes to spend $690 million of Eastside Sound Transit dollars on I405 HOV lanes? (Yeah…that should be unconstitutional, but those pesky constitutions are just “goddamn pieces of paper” that don’t really stop Republicans these days).
That’s the Rossi you intend to vote for?
Hell…why not just start dynamiting the tracks now…that might destroy light rail slightly faster….
Important to anyone who is new here – not one – no not one of Cynical’s figures is real or true in any remote way.
Carry on….
PS – will every republican here who is worried about deficit spending please contact your President and ask him to stop spending America into oblivion? He’s created the largest trade deficit and the largest budget deficit in the history of the USA.
Mr. Cynical,
But, but, but, when Rossi was the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, didn’t his 2003 budget come out with a $5.5 billion dollar deficit projected by 2009?
And, under Gregoire, didn’t that projected budget deficit, IN FACT, become a budget surplus (along with setting side $0.8 billion in reserves)?
My points are… (1) budget deficit projections happen almost every biennium. (2) Gregoire has solved bigger problems than the current projected deficit–she fixed Rossi’s mess, didn’t she?
Your facts and logic are giving me heartburn! Stop it already!
Cynical has mellowed. When he was first here, it was “leftist pinhead” this and “leftist pinhead” that. Screamin’ and namecalling of Goldy.
After twice being through the “irrelevant” grinder, the old nutty fire has died down a bit.
Or it could be the good life in the income tax levying state of Montana.
YLB==
YOU LEFTIST BASTARD
YLB–
Don’t know why it took so long for me to come up with that one.
Hey, I’ve always been mellow.
What do I have to worry about??
I don’t take any of this political stuff personally. You KLOWNS seem to be wound a little tight with all the profanity and angry diatribes. You KLOWNS are funny…you just don’t know how much you make me laugh.
14 – LMAO! Actually I like that one a bit.
6 CYN
Yeah, you’re pretty funny. The thing is, Cyn, that Rossi wants us to elect him Governor. And you say he doesn’t have to tell us what he would do about the budget? What an arrogant prick Dino Rossi is then! I think he’d better start thinking about Plan B, because he will never be Governor with that kind of fucking attitude.
And then there’s you, who cannot even articulate what your preferred candidate would do on issue important to the people. Why, it’s as though you have no informaion on your candidate’s issues. Is none available? That’s my guess. I certainly wouldn’t call you ignorant and able only to regurgitate talking points.
Rossi will start by asking all State at-will employees for their resignation and then rebuild a wild, out-of-control bureaucracy with substantially less “management”.