About the Poll About the Poll
The Washington Poll is a non-partisan, academic survey research project sponsored by
the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality (WISER), a research
center at the University of Washington in the School of Social Sciences. Dr. Matt Barreto,
an Associate Professor of Political Science is the Director of WISER and principal
investigator on this survey. Dr. Christopher Parker, an Associate Professor of Political
Science is the co-principal investigator of the Washington Poll.
The survey was administered by telephone, by the Washington Survey Research Center
at the UW, based on a randomly selected list of phone numbers using a publicly available
list of registered voters. The survey was in the field from May 3 – May 28, 2010. A total
of 1,695 registered voters throughout the state of Washington were interviewed, yielding a
2.3% margin of error. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
Previously we released the results of the first 1,252 completed surveys, as of May 23,
2010. However we continued to conduct our poll the week of May 24-28, and collected
and additional 443 interviews in the final week. The results here draw upon the entire
overall sample of 1,695, and are broken out by date.
2010 Senate Election
In this release of the data we look at vote intention in the 2010 U.S. Senate election
by vote history and date of interview.
For vote history we focus just on those respondents who cast a ballot in the Nov 2006
midterm elections. One really good predictor of participation in the Nov 2010 election is
whether you also voted in the Nov 2006 midterm election, as many people only vote in
presidential years, but then drop off in midterm years.
Second, we focus on whether or not the respondent was interviewed before or after May
24th. On Monday May 24th most major news outlets in Washington state and also
nationally, reported widely that Dino Rossi would in fact run for U.S. Senate, which
elevated him to the position of official candidate. We may expect to see a bump in Rossi
numbers if we focus just on the interviews conducted May 24 – 28 when he received high
news attention. However, readers should keep in mind that because we also split sample
the Rossi and generic Republican question, the effective sample in the final week is just
222/221 for each question of the 443 interviews conducted, raising the margin of error.
Thinking ahead to the November election for U.S. Senate, are you planning
to vote for, Patty Murray the Democrat, or the Republican candidate?
| Full Sample ALL RVs |
Those who Voted 06 |
Interviewed May3-23 |
Interviewed May24-28 |
|
| Murray | 44% | 41% | 42% | 46% |
| Undecided | 12% | 13% | 14% | 10% |
| Republican | 39% | 40% | 39% | 41% |
| Other | 4% | 4% | 4% | 2% |
| Sample Size | 848 | 470 | 626 | 222 |
| MoE | 3.3% | 4.5% | 3.9% | 6.6% |
Overall statewide sample = 1695 registered voters, +/- 2.3% (only ½ sample got this question though)
Thinking ahead to the November election for U.S. Senate, are you planning
to vote for, Patty Murray the Democrat, or Dino Rossi the GOP candidate?
| Full Sample ALL RVs |
Those who Voted 06 |
Interviewed May3-23 |
Interviewed May24-28 |
|
| Murray | 42% | 46% | 44% | 39% |
| Undecided | 12% | 9% | 12% | 13% |
| Rossi | 40% | 40% | 40% | 42% |
| Other | 4% | 3% | 3% | 5% |
| Sample Size | 847 | 469 | 626 | 221 |
| MoE | 3.3% | 4.5% | 3.9% | 6.6% |
Overall statewide sample = 1695 registered voters, +/- 2.3% (only ½ sample got this question though)