Elway (10/16-19, registered voters, 9/8-10):
Chris Gregoire (D-inc): 51 (48)
Dino Rossi (Prefers GOP Party): 39 (44)
(MoE: ±5%)
This comes as a bit of a surprise: after month upon month of ties and minuscule Gregoire leads in Rasmussen and SurveyUSA polling (with a brief boomlet for Rossi during the peak of Palinmania), local pollster Elway shows up with a poll with Gregoire blowing off the doors with a 12-point lead.
Interestingly, Gregoire seems to be picking up a bit of Republican support. Gregoire is supported by 85% of Democrats (which is consistent with other polls I’ve seen, and pointed to her main problem: holding down the number of Obama/Rossi ticket-splitters), but Rossi may have lost a bit of his headlock on the state’s Republicans, as this poll reports his support among GOP Partiers as only 87%.
I can’t tell from the writeup whether this poll identified Rossi as “Republican” or “prefers GOP Party,” as he appears on the ballot (last time around, Elway tested it both ways and found that Rossi performed significantly better when identified as “GOP” rather than “Republican”); if Elway used only “Republican” this time, that may be what’s making the difference here. Although Elway has an excellent reputation in Washington political circles, their numbers have tended to be quite different from the robo-pollers; we’ll have to wait till Election Day to see who has the better model.
Elway says Gregoire by 2 touchdowns!
Wonder if this is due to Rossi’s recent scandel.
I will wait for confirmation in other polls.
and Rasmussen is always generous to Reps. This is pretty accepted here in WA. Less than a month before the August 19 primary, Elway had Gregoire up by 16 and she ended up beating Rossi by 2. The going assumption here is that Gregoire is up in the very low single digits. I wish I could say that I believe Elway more on this one and it’s certainly good news, but I’m not getting carried away with the significance of this one.