During the month of September, the New York Times ran a series of live polling for competitive Congressional races across the country. This week, they polled Washington’s 8th Congressional District where Republican Dino Rossi is facing off against Democrat Kim Schrier. After making 40,568 calls and talking to 505 people, poll results show the race in a dead heat.
The poll shows Schrier with 46 percent of the vote, Rossi with 45 percent, and 9 percent report being undecided. With a margin of error at ±4.6, the race appears to be a tossup.
Though the 8th CD has never sent a Democrat to the US House, with the retirement of Rep. Dave Reichert, the district is seen as a potential pick-up for Democrats in November.
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The Times broke down their polling results based off the demographics of responders. Based on the 505 interviews, female responders favored Schrier at 50 percent compared to 40 percent for Rossi. Males favored Rossi 51 percent to 42 percent. The poll results also show younger voters (18-29 years old) favoring Schrier, while all other ages favored Rossi.
It is important to note that the striped sup-groups are a small sample size based off less than 100 respondents.
Outside of questions related to the US House race, the poll also asked respondents about key federal issues. Forty-seven percent of responders said they would prefer Democrats take control of the US House, compared to 45 percent who said they want to see Republicans keep control. Forty five percent support Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and 48 percent said they support repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
The majority of those polled (52 percent) in the 8th CD also said they support “the creation of a national insurance program, in which every American would get insurance from a single government plan.” Forty one percent said they would oppose this type of insurance program and 7 percent said they didn’t know.
As part of its live polling coverage, the Times also put together a timeline of results over the last few days as well as a graphic showing the geographic location of each phone call and interview within the 8th CD.
Additional results from the live poll can be found here.
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