Overwhelmingly, Washington voters would prefer a primary election to caucuses

A majority of registered voters across party lines would prefer that Washington become a primary-only state, according to a new Washington Poll. The finding, based on a Feb. 7-18 survey of 300 randomly selected registered voters statewide, comes in the wake of last week's largely anticlimactic presidential primary election, held 10 days after the state's party caucuses.

Secretary of State Sam Reed had predicted a 47 percent turnout, but according to the latest figures the turnout was less than 38 percent, or a total of about 1.25 million voters.

The caucuses determined the allocation of all delegates for Democrats and about half the delegates for Republicans.

The new poll, with a 5.6 percent margin of error, found that only 10 percent of voters would prefer a caucus-only system; 30 percent would prefer to keep both caucuses and primaries; and 52 percent would prefer only primaries.

It also found that 65 percent would prefer to continue to hold a primary. Broken down by party affiliation, the percentages in favor were 62 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of Republicans, and 59 percent of independents.

The Washington Poll is a nonpartisan, academic survey research project sponsored the University of Washington Department of Political Science.