WASHINGTON, D.C. – Cygnal, the nation’s most accurate private polling firm, created a new proprietary polling instrumented that focused on a custom universe of potential GOP voters that shows Joe Kent (R) is well-positioned to win the Republican primary on August 1.
“As it stands today, Joe Kent has secured the majority support of the Republican vote for the jungle primary in Washington’s 3rd Congressional district. For the general election, the data suggests that with the right messaging campaign and increased positive focus, and a strong get-out-the-vote campaign Kent can flip this district back for the GOP.” said pollster Mitchell Brown. “Washington’s 3rd congressional district was a unique challenge that required us to contact several types of voters from previous polls to better understand where voters were in the race. This process shows Kent has a +43 net favorability and leads the pack of Republicans in the jungle primary. Kent’s closest opponent on the Republican side has just 12 percent.”
This new Cygnal data shows a near majority (47%) say Kent is their top choice with another 34 percent leaning toward supporting him. Of those leaning Kent’s way, nearly two-thirds say his policies are what makes him an appealing candidate and 60 % attribute his loss in the 2022 general election to the more than $10 million spent against him from groups outside of the district.
“For this survey, we tried a new methodology for direct comparison,” said Noah Wyhof-Rudnick, Cygnal’s Director of Innovation. “After conducting several surveys in the fall of 2022, we conducted an exit poll of Republican voters who were verified as voting in either the primary, the general, or both. We were able to directly compare responses from before the election to after, seeing shifts in moods and how reported undecideds broke.”
With the primary contest still nearly a year away, only nine percent of respondents in this unique poll said they were leaning against supporting Kent, this group can be swayed to secure a larger ballot share. A less contentious Republican primary, and Kent’s unifying Republican message, sets the stage for a win for national Republicans.
“This data shows Joe Kent continues to make considerable headway with voters and considering 83 percent recalled voting for him in 2022’s general election, his positives are headed toward victory while his negatives are trending downward,” concluded Brown.