UW poll predicts win for Gregoire

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published October 28, 2008

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Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire leads Republican Dino Rossi by six percentage points in the latest Washington Poll, getting a boost from her ties to Democratic presidential candidate Sen Barack Obama, pollsters say.

Washington voters back Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain by a wider margin — 55 percent to 34 percent. They also are inclined to pass Initiative 1000, which proposes to make Washington the second state in the nation to allow assisted suicide.

Those are key findings Monday from the Washington Poll, an academic research project begun in 2006 by the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at the University of Washington. The poll queried 600 Washington voters Oct. 18-26 and has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points, said Matt Barreto, poll director and a UW political science professor.

"The new data suggests that Gregoire is benefiting tremendously from Obama's popularity in Washington.

"Her decision to endorse Obama back in February is now paying dividends with many Obama supporters also supporting Gregoire," Barreto said in an announcement. "However, we need to remember that there is still over a week left in this election, and Dino Rossi has run a very effective campaign, so we could still see the race tighten down the stretch."

Barreto said voters who favor Obama and Rossi are mainly younger than age 35, a demographic group that is favoring both candidates by close to 10 percentage points.

The results come just a week before the vote-by-mail election in most counties ends next Tuesday.

The poll is the second in a week to suggest Gregoire might be moving ahead of Rossi, the Republican whom she beat by 133 votes in 2004. Gregoire held a 51 percent to 45 percent edge over Rossi in the UW poll.

Most other recent polls by out-of-state companies show Rossi and Gregoire virtually tied, but those often use computerized phone-message technology rather than live interviews with voters. But a Rasmussen Report last week showed Gregoire up by 2 points, which still was within the margin of error, and the Elway Poll this month put her ahead by 12 percentage points.

The Washington Poll had Gregoire up by 11 points in February.

Gregoire spokesman Aaron Toso said the polls reflect a momentum he thinks is building for the Democrat. He said a massive get-out-the-vote effort has included 400,000 phone calls and visits to 100,000 homes in the past week and a half since ballots went out.

Toso accused Rossi of running "the most negative campaign in the history of the state" with financial help from the state's powerful builder lobby, and he claimed it is "backfiring" on Republicans.

Rossi's campaign spokeswoman, Jill Strait, disputed the poll's credibility, asserting that past Washington Poll results were not accurate.

"Our internal polls show this race is extremely tight," Strait said, calling the differences within the margin of error.

Rossi has accused Gregoire of running a bitter, angry campaign, and third-party groups running ads on both sides have spent close to $16 million on messages that neither candidate can control.

The UW poll has had a record for accuracy since its debut in 2006, predicting U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell's large victory two years ago and the passage or failure of numerous initiatives. But its estimation of the margins of victory has overstated the eventual result for some ballot proposals.