While Patty Murray has a tough fight on her hands for reelection in Washington this year her junior colleague Maria Cantwell appears to be on slightly better ground as she heads for her own 2012 reelection contest. She has better approval numbers than Murray and has outside the margin of error leads against a pair of hypothetical opponents.
Cantwell's approval rating is 46% with 38% of voters disapproving of her. That +8 net approval rating compares favorably to the +1 standing we found for Murray (46/45) earlier this week. Opinions about her break almost completely along party lines with just 9% of Republicans approving and 6% of Democrats disapproving of her. Independents split slightly against her, 39/44.
Tested against a pair of Washington's Republican House members Cantwell leads Dave Reichert 47-41 and Cathy McMorris Rodgers 49-37. McMorris Rodgers is almost a complete unknown statewide at this point with 74% of voters having no opinion of her. Reichert is better known but doesn't have great numbers- 25% of voters across the state have a positive opinion of him while 29% see him negatively. That's largely because Democrats (47%) are more unified in their dislike of Reichert than Republicans (39%) are in seeing him favorably.
Of course 2012 is a long ways away and we wouldn't have said Patty Murray looked vulnerable at this point two years or even one year ago. But it's a good sign for Cantwell that she doesn't have as many voters who dislike her as Murray does, and that she leads these potential contests even in a bad political climate for her party.
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13 comments:
This is off-topic, but I saw that you've been newly hired by Kos to do horserace polling, so congratulations. Hopefully you can help bring some transparency and dependability back to the polling industry.
Tom,
Initially, I was going to take you to task on a few comments and numbers that you produced here, but after reading what the first "Anonymous" had to say to you, I decided instead to give it a break. I don't want to think of myself as piling on.
It was funny though.
Catch ya next time around Tom.
With no attack ads against her, Cantwell can't even poll above 50% against candidates with no statewide ID. Cantwell is certainly vulnerable.
Christian Liberty, won't the electorate look more Democratic in 2012? This is a weak point for Dems. In a weak weak year, Cantwell is leading two Republicans.
Reichert has a decent statewide ID because of his service as King County (home of Seattle) Sheriff and his role in capturing the Green River Killer and tamping down violence at the Seattle WTO protests. He's got higher name rec in WA than Elaine Marshall does in NC, yet he's not doing quite as well. He's the GOP's best bet, for sure, except maybe Dino Rossi if he loses against Murray and decides to make another Quixotic quest.
No, ANON. Quite the opposite. The electorate in 2012 will be decidedly more CONSERVATIVE than the one in 2008. As long the economy is struggling (the Democrat Depression), voters will be more CONSERVATIVE than they were in the Bush BOOM.
Voters of all stripes will be more CONSERVATIVE. They will increasingly favor CONSERVATIVE policies on taxes, spending, energy exploration, immigration, and more. Republicans will offer the policies that America wants. Most Democrats will be too blinded by their ideology to do the right thing. Those Democrats who do the right thing will be punished by their left-wing lunatic base.
The electorate and elected officials will be increasingly more CONSERVATIVE for much of the decade to come. The slight movement we have seen to the right so far is nothing more than a foretaste of what the coming years will bring.
Anon, your wishful thinking that this is a "low point" for Dems is contrary to reality. A better comparison would be to compare 2010 to 1966. Not only did Democrats suffer landslide defeats, but Republicans dominated presidential elections for decades. Not until Clinton repudiated Democrat orthodoxy could any Democrat win a second term. All the while Republicans were moving further to the right and the electorate was moving right along with them.
2012 will be a year in which Obama is defeated and Republicans will INCREASE their gains in both houses of Congress.
Not until a Democratic candidate pulls a Clinton (repudiates large portions of the Democratic platform) will America ever trust Democrats again.
We are in the early stages of the next great depression. America will only become MORE CONSERVATIVE the longer it continues. Americans will only grow to support conservative economic policies more and more and more. Democrats will either run as conservatives.. or lose.
"won't the electorate look more Democratic in 2012?"
No, I think you fail to understand how profoundly the economy will change the electorate. The electorate will not only be more conservative for the next 4 months; the electorate will trend more conservative for the next 4 DECADES!
The open question is this: will Republicans move far enough to the right? So far the answer is clearly no, they have not.
"The electorate will not only be more conservative for the next 4 months; the electorate will trend more conservative for the next 4 DECADES!"
HAHA! Just about every single word you post on this blog drips with hyperbole and ridiculously unsupported assertions, but that just takes the cake. Wow.
I love to see you cheering a struggling economy. Just shows where Republicans' hearts really lie.
Dustin, I am not "cheering" a struggling economy. I have just come to accept that a struggling economy is inevitable as long as Democrats insist on punishing productive earners and investors. I wish Democrats would wake up and do the right thing (that's where my heart really is) but they are unfortunately too stubborn. I would rather Democrats come to their senses rather than drag us down a painful path of penury. But I understand that if Democrats don't accede to Republican's superior wisdom on economic policy, the electorate will support conservative policies whether Democrats do or not.
To the Democrats and leftists:
"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!" (Ezekiel 33:11)
I take no pleasure in seeing people suffer for the lunacy of Democrat policies... nor in seeing Democrats stubbornly refuse to change their misguided ways.
I would rather Democrats come to know the truth and support conservative economic policies. (In fact, social mood will drift in such a conservative direction over the coming years, many of them might.)
I would rather have both parties support lower taxes, downsizing the government, and privatizing government functions.
I am not "cheering" a depression. I am reading economic data and economic history. And I see that social mood is changing to become more conservative. And I see that the peak in America's (and the world's) tolerance for debt and deficit spending has been building not just for years, but for decades.
I have studied this intently and intensively. The past decade has seen multiple economic indicators form multi-decade highs that are likely to become multi-decade tops. The demographic challenges are too large. The debt is too burdensome. The changes in economic behavior and cultural mood are large enough to form multi-decade trends. When we say that we are facing the greatest downturn since the Great Depression, how do you not respect the implications of such a pivotal era?
Someday, years from now, you'll remember that I tried to warn you. And you'll realize that I was right about more than you wanted to admit; that I knew more than you could understand at the time. I don't expect everything I'm saying to make sense. It has been the culmination of lots of study in esoteric theories and volumes of data. But trust me: the economy is in more trouble than Democrats want to admit (even to themselves) and the societal and economic changes will be so great that higher levels of taxing and spending and government regulation will be political unfeasible.
Haha, are you that skeezy guy on the street with the cardboard sign warning us of the apocalypse?
Christian Liberty, about the whole debt, do you support cutting the Defense Department budget?
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