Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell appears on her way to securing a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, according to new poll that shows her with a resounding lead over her Republican challenger.
Cantwell leads Dr. Raul Garcia, 55% to 32% among likely voters, with 13% undecided, according to the WA Poll.
The poll shows Democrats in commanding position in Washington, with Cantwell; Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is running for governor; and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president, all holding leads over 15 points.
With a 23-point lead, Cantwell has the biggest lead of the bunch. Democrats have occupied both Senate seats in Washington, D.C., since Cantwell first won in 2000. That election, in which she defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, was decided by about 2,000 votes statewide, or less than 0.1%. Since then, Cantwell has never had a close election. And it appears her fourth reelection effort, which would send her toward 30 years in office, will be no different.
Cantwell holds commanding lead in Senate race
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell leads Republican challenger Dr. Raul Garcia in every part of the state.
Source: The WA Poll is sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5 and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Conducted online Oct. 9-14 by SurveyUSA, the WA Poll reached 1,000 adults, including 703 people likely to vote in the general election, using a population sample provided by Lucid Holdings. The respondents were weighted to U.S. census proportions for gender, age, race, education and homeownership. (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)
Cantwell leads among men and women. She leads in every age group and every racial demographic. She leads among parents and people without kids, renters and homeowners, among those with a high school education, those with some college and those with a four-year degree. She leads among those making less than $40,000 a year, those making more than $80,000 and everybody in between.
She leads 95% to 2% among Democrats and wins independents by 13 percentage points. Garcia leads among Republicans by a more modest 76% to 12%.
It’s been a relatively low-profile campaign, in the shadow of the presidential and gubernatorial races, as Garcia has struggled to raise the money to mount an aggressive challenge. Garcia has not run any television ads.
His campaign raised $660,000 through the end of September, including $121,000 in the third quarter.
Cantwell raised more than $11.7 million through the end of September, including nearly $1 million in the last quarter.
It’s also been a polite campaign, again in contrast to higher profile races, with neither candidate running attack ads. At two debates, both candidates were friendly, focused on touting their own positions and hardly mentioning their opponents at all.
Cantwell, in her decades in the Senate, has often governed and portrayed herself as a technocratic lawmaker, seeking bipartisan solutions for issues that don’t dominate the headlines.
In recent years, she’s touted her role in finding resolutions to issues including semiconductor production, Federal Aviation Administration regulation, apple exports to India and Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon fishery.
“I didn’t go to Washington to argue with people or get on cable TV,” she said at a Thursday debate in Seattle. “I went there to get things done and we’ve been able to do things that are lowering costs and increasing wages.”
Garcia, an emergency room doctor, has pitched himself as a more moderate Republican, willing to part ways with his Trump-dominated party. He has refused to say who he supports for president, he doesn’t question the 2020 election and he says he would vote to reestablish abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade.
It has not persuaded voters. A whopping 91% of poll respondents who said abortion was their most important issue supported Cantwell. She was also the choice of respondents who said their top issue was climate, crime, homelessness or protecting democracy.
Garcia won a plurality of voters who said cost of living was most important. And he was the favorite of 80% of respondents who said border security was their top issue.
His rhetoric on the border is a far cry from that of Trump, who has scapegoated immigrants, accusing them of having “bad genes” and “poisoning the blood of our country.”
At Thursday’s debate, Garcia’s voice broke as he described emigrating from Cuba with his mother, as a child.
“That fire to come to this country is the fire that every immigrant that comes to this country has,” he said. He said the country should already have given citizenship to Dreamers, children who were brought into the country illegally by their parents, and that there should be a path to legalization or permanent residency for others already here.
Cantwell nodded along as he spoke.
