President Biden is positioned to carry Washington and Oregon in this year’s election and maintain a Democratic hold stretching back to 1988, according to a new survey of the region.
By contrast, ex-President Trump has a two-one lead in conservative Idaho, which hasn’t gone for a Democratic nominee since Lyndon Johnson’s narrow 5,000-vote victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964.
The poll was conducted by Civiqs for the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) with an unusually large sampling of 1,012 interviews. It has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.4 percent based on the 95 percent confidence interval.
In the contest for Washington’s 12 electoral votes, Biden has a 54-39 percent lead over ex-President Trump with only 7 percent undecided. Biden enjoys a 54-34 percent advantage in Oregon, which casts 8 electoral votes (one more than in 2020). The Oregon survey found 11 percent undecided.
Idaho is Trump country, by a 63-28 percent margin with 9 percent undecided. The Gem State casts 4 electoral votes, and nationwide 270 are needed to elect a president.
As noted by NPI executive director Andrew Villeneuve, the three Northwest states have been set in their voting patterns “for a long time.” The most recent genuine contest came in 2000 when Karl Rove, chief strategist of the George W. Bush campaign, sought to grow the battlefield into Democratic-leaning states.
Bush was fun to watch. He read from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to school kids, in English in Seattle and Spanish during a Yakima stop. He defended Snake River dams, which environmental and fisheries groups want removed. In classic Bushspeak, he referred to “the river on the Snake” and declared that “the man and the fish can coexist.”.
Al Gore was also a frequent presence, once inspecting a sinkhole in Shoreline. The Green Party candidacy forced Democrats to spend money here. Gore climbed Mt. Rainier on one visit. In 2016, by contrast, Donald Trump made two summertime appearances in Washington. Hillary Clinton came late in the fall, but to raise campaign cash rather than to rally voters.
Of distant memory are Bill Clinton’s big rallies at the Pike Place Market, or the Bill Clinton-Al Gore 1996 bus tour of Southwest Washington. Clinton used a microphone on the bus to greet bystanders, and said, “Thank you for coming” to a Labrador retriever spotted on a Longview street corner.
Joe Biden was confined to quarters during the 2020 pandemic, but has come here as President for a Green River College forum on drug prices and the cost of Insulin to treat Diabetes.
What little has been seen of candidates — and presidents — has been mostly to collecting campaign cash. Money raised in Medina mansions gets exported and spent in battleground states.
Unfortunately, those aren’t two states that “count” come Election Day…..
Geezus who gives a flying flip. I hope you didn’t think this was a newsflash…..