Seattle pollster Stuart Elway kept hearing that people had grown weary of it all. After the third election in a row with Donald Trump, the story was that folks had begun tuning out the political news.
So he set out to test it.
“Man did that ever turn out to be a myth,” Elway told me. He found that Washington voters are not only engaged, but intensely, even obsessively so. Especially the Democrats.
“The Democrats are ready to grab the pitchforks,” he said.
The poll, which Elway did with CascadePBS, is unusual because of how emphatic it is. Typically in polling conducted more than a year away from the next national election, you get a lot of indecisive answers and “no opinion” or “don’t know” responses, he said.
But when asked their gut reactions to the new Trump administration, voters were anything but nuanced. Elway’s sample couldn’t find a single Democratic voter who had “no opinion,” and also not a one with much good to say. Their answers ranged from “horrified,” to “disaster,” “terrified” and “disgusted,” along with “fascist,” “crazy,” “authoritarian” and “sick.”
