Hominid Views

There were some polls released today that should be of interest for Washington state folks.

The Washington Poll released some key results for the upcoming ongoing election. Initiative 1033 and Referendum 71 were polled statewide on a sample of 724 individuals. They also polled the King County Executive race and the Seattle Mayoral race on a sample of 400 people in each.

The poll was conducted from 14 October to 26 October under the supervision of Dr. Matt Barreto of the University of Washington, Political Science Department. The in-house poll employed undergraduate students recruited from political science courses to conduct telephone interviews.

Also, Survey USA released poll results for I-1033 and R-71 that surveyed 561 people.

For each race/ballot measure, I’ve used the likely voter numbers to conducted Monte Carlo simulation of 1,000,000 elections in order to evaluate the probabilities for each possible outcome. A fuller description of the methods can be found here.

Initiative 1033

The Washington Poll found that 40% would vote to approve and 49% would vote to disapprove of I-1033; 11% were undecided. In the simulations the initiative passes 33,460 times and fails to pass 964,436 times. Thus, the poll suggests that the initiative fails with a 96.6% probability, and wins with a 3.4% probability.

This graph shows the outcomes from the simulations. Outcomes to the right of the 50% line are “fails” (blue) and those to the left are “succeeds” (red).

The Survey USA poll has Initiative 1033 failing by 50% to 38%. The simulations show the measure losing 982,708 times and winning 16,028 times. The poll provides evidence that the measure has a 98.4% probability of failing and a 1.6% probability of passing.

Since the polls were taken back-to-back, it is worth combining them for an answer with less uncertainty. The pooled sample of 1,285 people, of which 1,138 voted to approve or disapprove gives 49.4% who vote no and 39.1% who vote yes on the measure. The simulations give “Disapprove” 997,139 wins and “Approve” 2,692 wins. The combined polls suggest that the measure will fail with a 99.7% probability:

Referendum 71

The Washington Poll found 57% who would vote to approve R-71 and 38% who would vote to disapprove. The simulations found that the initiative succeeded 999,932 times and failed 7 times. This suggests that the referendum has a very high (near-100%) probability of passing.

The Survey USA poll has 49.9% voting to approve and 43.0% voting to disapprove, with 7.1% undecided. The Monte Carlo results give “Approve” 883,039 wins and “Disapprove” 111,097 wins. Thus, this poll provides evidence that the measure will be approved with a 88.8% probability, and fail with an 11.2% probability.

Again, let’s combine the Washington Poll and Survey USA polls for this measure as a way to reduce the uncertainty of outcome. The pooled sample of 1,285 people, of which 1,210 voted to approve or disapprove gives 53.9% voting to disapprove and 40.2% voting to approve. Some 5.9% were undecided. The simulation results give 999,886 wins for “Approve” and 107 wins for “Disapprove”. The combined polls suggest a near-100% probability that the measure will pass.

King County Executive Race

This race has County Council chair Dow Constantine running against former news anchor Susan Hutchison. Although the race is nonpartisan, Constantine is an avowed progressive Democrat, whereas Hutchison maintains she is non-partisan despite a mountain of evidence suggesting she has strong Republican leanings.

The poll found Constantine leading Hutchison by 47% to 34% with likely voters, and 19% of likely voters were undecided. In the simulated elections, Constantine won 978,592 times; Hutchison won 19,432 times. The poll results, thus, suggest that Constantine has a 98.1% probability of winning, and Hutchison has a 1.9% probability of winning.

Seattle Mayoral Race

This race has Mike McGinn facing off against Joe Mallahan. The poll found 36% favoring McGinn and 44% favoring Mallahan, with 20% still undecided. The final simulation tally gave McGinn 100,693 wins and Mallahan 892,131 wins. These results suggest that McGinn has a 10.1% probability of winning and Mallahan has a 89.9% probability of winning.

I almost always included the caveat that the results give probabilistic outcomes based on an election held now. But the election is ongoing–many people had their ballots while the poll was “in the field.” (In fact, for the statewide ballot measures, the Washington Poll breaks the results down by those who have and have not voted.) So my standard caveat doesn’t quite work. The idea still holds, since the Washington Poll was conducted over a two-week period ending a week before the ballot deadline, and the Survey USA poll was conducted with just over a week to election “day”. Things can change over the next week. Also, there were a surprising number of people who were undecided on candidates or measures.

That said, the current findings feel correct to me. The laws that would be approved under R-71 are consistent with the the liberal and western-style libertarian sentiments found in the state. That I-1033 should be rejected (but, perhaps, just barely) makes sense too. I-1033 is draconian, it will hurt. And the voters have picked up on that fact. The atmosphere feels much like it did under the far less draconian I-912, and that measure failed. The probable win by Constantine makes perfect sense given that the four leading Democrats grabbed 60% of the primary vote to Hutchison’s 33%. I haven’t a clue whether the mayoral race makes sense—I don’t live in Seattle.