WA-08: Burner Up By 4 in SUSA; SSP Upgrades to "Tossup"

by: Crisitunity

Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 12:52 AM EDT

Darcy Burner (D): 50 (44)
Dave Reichert (R-inc): 46 (54)
(MoE: ±4%)

This race has spent most of this cycle at the top of the races-to-watch list for the blogosphere, after Darcy Burner captivated the netroots in 2006 en route to losing to one-term incumbent Dave Reichert in this D+2 district by a few points, and then continued running for 2008 without missing a beat. However, a lot of blogospherians (including us at SSP) started worrying a bit in the immediate wake of the financial crisis, when other netroots-backe rematch candidates in swing districts (Larry Kissell, Eric Massa, Dan Seals) suddenly started to climb into the lead but Darcy Burner continued to languish (trailing not just in a Research 2000 poll but a Democratic internal as well).

However, two subsequent internal polls showed Burner with a lead, and then Burner posted titanic fundraising numbers for the third quarter; the one thing she didn't have in her arsenal was a public poll having shown her ahead. Well, finally, we've got one; she's up 4 in the latest KING5-sponsored SurveyUSA poll, a sharp reversal of fortune from her 10-point deficit last time, taken during the afterglow of the GOP convention. With that in mind, Swing State Project is returning this race to "Tossup" status.

It's unclear whether this race was moving at the same speed as the other similarly-situated races and R2K just happened to miss that, or if this race truly did take longer to surge because, as I've speculated before, the tech-heavy WA-08 is better insulated from the financial crisis (up to the point where people open their 401(k) statements). Either way, though, we're starting to look pretty good in this race. (And if the NRCC's decision to dump $454,000 into this race, the largest component of their multi-million dollar ad buy today, is any indication, the GOP knows it too.)

One other developing happening in this race: there's a kerfuffle, helped along by the Seattle Times (the more conservative of Seattle's two papers), over Burner's degree from Harvard. Nobody's disputing that she graduated, just parsing whether or not she double-majored in computer science and economics. (Short answer, apparently they don't even have 'majors' at Harvard.) I suspect this will have the same effect as the Reichert-cheating-at-media-buying scandal that came a few days before: it'll rile up the partisans but whoosh right past the few remaining undecideds.