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In A Field Cleared of Liberal Competition, Constantine Still Hasn’t Closed The Deal

By: itsonlywords (Diary)  |  September 6th, 2009 at 09:57 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Susan Hutchison leads Dow Constantine in the King County Executive race, 47% to 44%, not that this information would be available to you if the Seattle Times were your primary source of local news; a search of their website this morning found no mention of the King5/SurveyUSA poll conducted September 1st through 3rd.

The Seattle P-I does a bit better; they report the results, but with the rather misleading headline, “Poll: Constantine closes gap on Hutchison in exec’s race.”

While not an outright lie, the P-I is playing Spin the Headline and making a good game of it. To arrive at this conclusion, the P-I compares the new results to pre-primary poll results, when the Democrat vote was split between three relatively strong candidates – Constantine, Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter. If the P-I wanted to call attention to the real news, wouldn’t a more appropriate headline have been, “Poll: Constantine fails to take lead over Hutchison in exec’s race?”

Both headlines are true, after a fashion, but one cuts right to the heart of the news; the other, well, is deliberately directs attention away from it.

The lead is within the margin of error. Even so, it’s extremely interesting that Hutchison, the more conservative of the two candidates, is quite possibly leading this race. The fact that Constantine isn’t polling ahead in a field cleared of liberal competition in ultra-liberal King County is actually rather astonishing, evidenced by the fact that the local media is busy providing cover. Here’s to hoping it’s a sign of things to come.

(How liberal is King County? For those of you who don’t know, Seattle, in the heart of the county, will have two liberal Democrats on the mayoral ballot this fall as a result of Washington’s misguided top-two primary system. So much for choice.)

Cross-posted at It’s Only Words

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  • Jeff Weimer

    Thank god for small favors. And it seems both the Mayor candidates hate the Alaskan Way tunnel – which Nickels pushed through in direct contravention to the will of the voters.

    The 20 cent per bag tax? Gone, but by a slimmer margin than I would have thought.

    The “non-partisan” election system was designed to specifically have this situation. It’s a feature, not a bug. You know in an overwhelmingly liberal town like Seattle, they knew it would atrophy the opposition party if no one knew which party the candidate was. And they cynically sold it with all the high-minded rhetoric about nasty partisanship.

  • Jeff Weimer

    A lot of Su Hutchinson’s popularity came from her anchoring the KIRO newscasts for all those years. When it really comes out she’s a (gasp!) Republican, then her polling will sink like a stone.

    Personally, I was pleasantly surprised to find out she’s a Republican. I assumed that since she was 1) in the media, 2) lived in Seattle, and 3) headed an arts foundation, that she was a run of the mill liberal Democrat just like everyone else who runs for office there. She’s in the top two despite the non-partisan primary system.

    It’s funny, instead of being more open, it hides pertinent information from the voters.

  • http://itsonlywords55@wordpress.com paulag1955

    Frankly, that there are Seattle voters who don’t yet know Hutchison’s a Republican. God knows that information was flung around often enough during the primary season.

    Hutchison does have enormous personal popularity and I’m hoping against hope that it will carry her through. Close-minded liberals need to see (what in their minds would be) unconventional conservatives. Maybe their heads will explode.