Yes another poll has been release in the WA gubernatorial contest between former Rep. Jay Inslee and Washington AG Rob McKenna. This one is the Washington Poll. The poll surveyed 644 likely voters from October 1 to October 16.
The poll has Inslee leading McKenna by 47.1% to 46.3%. The margin of error is 3.9%. The +0.8% lead is consistent with two other recent polls. Yesterday’s PPP poll had Inslee leading by +5%. And just before that, a SurveyUSA poll had Inslee up by +3%. This new poll covers a broader, and older set of dates.
A Monte Carlo analysis using a million simulated elections, using only data from this new poll gives Inslee 555,393 wins to McKenna’s 432,729 wins. This suggests that, if the election was held now, Inslee would win with a probability of 56.2% and McKenna would win with a 43.8% probability.
Here is the distribution of election outcomes:
Given that we have three polls that are either consecutive or overlapping, lets look at what they have to jointly say about the state of this race.
The pooled set with this new poll and the PPP and SurveyUSA polls mentioned above give us a sample of 1,761 people. Of the 1,612 who had a partisan preference, 834 (47.4%) preferred Inslee and 788 (44.2%) preferred McKenna. The Monte Carlo analysis gives Inslee 835,698 wins to McKenna’s 160,205 wins.
Jointly, the polls suggest that in an election right now, Inslee would win with a 83.9% probability to McKenna’s 16.1% probability. Here is the distribution:
By standard statistical inference, Inslee’s lead isn’t quite “significant.” But the larger polling trend shows that Inslee holds a small, but consistent lead over McKenna:
Note: This post was originally written using the numbers for Registered Voters, simply because I hadn’t noticed that results for Likely Voters was available. I subsequently reanalyzed the data and rewrote the post to reflect the Likely Voter numbers. I regret the error…because, man, was that a pain in the ass!
It looks like turnout will be the deciding factor. I haven’t received my ballot yet – when do they drop?
1 – King County ballots started going out yesterday.. I’m going to check my mailbox in a moment..
@2 YLB,
My ballot arrived today. Will be in the box tomorrow.
@ Darryl, how long has it been since Bobby Mac led a poll?
MikeBoyScout,
Thanks for asking.
I mentioned in yesterday’s analysis:
So…this makes nine consecutive polls….
I’m wondering how participation is affected if the current swing of national support toward Romney continues.
If I recall correctly, Gregoire had plans for a too-close-to-call speech and it was a surprise that the vote was so emphatically Democrat in 2008, part of the Obama landslide.
How is WA gov vote turnout affected if Obama’s support in the key swings continues to crumble?
Hopefully I said that in a way that isn’t off-topic and doesn’t get me deleted.
Bob,
“Hopefully I said that in a way that isn’t off-topic and doesn’t get me deleted.”
Definitely not off topic!
Regarding your question about how the race is affected if the “swing of national support toward Romney continues” and if Obama’s support in the key swings continues to crumble.”
At this point, your hypothetical question seems empirically, umm…irrelevant.
It looks like Roger Rabbit was correct…I could be wrong, but the previous Obama-Romney analysis is sure looking like Romney’s high-water mark!
(See details in the
forthcomingnew post.)@6 There was a solid rationale behind my observation, which perhaps Bob overlooked. To wit, Romney got a bounce from the first debate, but it came from the small slice of voters still undecided and persuadable, and once that pool was tapped — and the first debate largely tapped it — there’s no place left for him to get more votes. It’s analogous to reworking an old oil well with a new extraction technique and pumping out the last remaining barrels of oil that were left in previous go-rounds. After the well is finally pumped dry, no more oil comes up, no matter how much you keep cranking on the pump handle. That’s where Romney is now; there are no more persuadable votes left in the well, so there’s no direction his support can go from here except down. And because that last surge of votes he flushed out of the undecided pool weren’t enough to put him ahead, even if he manages to retain all of this votes, there’s no way for him to win this election.
@5 Kap’n Kornflake,
Voter turnout in WA will be higher than the national average regardless of Obama’s movement in polls leading up to November 6th. The reason is voter accessibility to their constitutionally guaranteed franchise provided by mail in ballots.
McKenna is well done at this point. Most have not believed his moderate BS for months now.
you are leaving the confines of the basement? holy shit!- someone call King 5!