A non-partisan poll sponsored by University of Washington researchers found:

• Joe Mallahan leads Mike McGinn in the Seattle mayoral race, 39 percent to 32 percent, with a sizable 28 percent still undecided a week before voting ends next Tuesday. Most interestingly, the poll compared the candidates’ popularity before and after McGinn’s announceent last week that he would abide by the wishes of the City Council’s in moving ahead with the replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel.

Almost immediately, pundits chalked up the announcement to McGinn believing his tunnel position was holding him back. McGinn has tried to draw a contrast since, saying that he opposes the tunnel and does not believe the city should move ahead if Seattle is on the hook for cost overruns. Mallahan says the project should move ahead regardless, though he’d try to remove the provision on overruns in the next session of the state legislature.

If the poll is accurate — and McGinn’s camp says it’s not — the announceent was a grand miscalculation.

The poll –sponsored by the University of Washington, Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality — found that McGinn actually led Mallahan 35 percent to 34 percent with 30 percent undecided in the week before the announcement. Since then, Mallahan’s support has surged to 45 percent while McGinn’s has dropped to 29 percent.

That last figure might be most telling, in that it is based on poll results for this week. The 39 percent to 32 percent figures represented a total of the poll respondants over the two weeks before and after the announcement.

Upon the poll’s release, McGinn’s campaign sent out a press release questioning it, saying not enough Seattle voters were polled to make it meaningful.

However, the poll is in line with the latest KING5/Survey USA poll last week, which had Mallahan leading 43 percent to 36 percent;

• In the King County Executive’s race, Dow Constanine led Susan Hutchison 45 to 32 percent among all registered voters. Among those deemed likely to vote, the lead was 47 to 34 percent.

An Oct. 15 KING5/Survey USA poll, however, had Hutchison leading 47 to 42 percent.

• The Washington Poll had the R-71 domestic partnership measure leading 56 percent to 39 percent. The latest internal campaign poll had the measure leading 53 percent to 36 percent;
• I-1033, which would cap tax increases, trailing 46 percent to 41 percent. That would be quite a turnaround from the last KING5/SurveyUSA poll Oct. 3, which had the initiative leading 45 percent to 32 percent.

. The principal aim of the survey is to collect and analyze public opinion of registered voters in Washington state on an annual basis. The study will be fielded every year in late October and contain questions on ballot initiatives, candidates, important political and policy issues of the day, as well as viewpoints on social and economic indicators in the state.

The poll is a collaborative effort by academic researchers in the state of Washington, and is currently sponsored by the UW. Prof. Matt A. Barreto, Department of Political Science at UW, is the Director of the Washington Poll. Other collaborators on the poll include Christopher Parker, professor of political science at UW, John Gastil, professor of communications at UW, Cindy Watts, professor of health policy at UW, and Todd Donovan, professor of political science at Western Washington University.