Poll: Joe Kent Takes Lead in Washington State Congressional Race

Jacob BlissNovember 5, 2021

Trump-endorsed Green Beret veteran Joe Kent takes the lead in the race for Washington’s Third Congressional District while Republican incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who supported Trump’s impeachment, sits at third, according to a Trafalgar group poll.

The poll asked, “If the election for Congress were held tomorrow,” who would they vote for in the jungle primary. This means that only the top two candidates with the highest percentage advance to the general election. The survey currently shows Kent with a roughly six-point lead ahead of Democrat Brent Hennrich, followed by the incumbent impeachment Republican.

The poll shows Kent is in the lead with 30.6 percent and Hennrich in second place with 24.7 percent. Herrera Beutler is in third with 23.4 percent, meaning that she would not advance past the primary, along with Heidi St. John, another Republican, with 9.8 percent.

Six percent said they would vote for an “other Democrat,” 1.8 percent were “undecided,” and 3.8 percent said they “wouldn’t vote.”

In this June 4, 2020, photo, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) speaks during a Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. (Al Drago/Pool via AP, File)

The poll also showed that Kent is favored by 39.7 percent, with 22.4 percent saying “Very Favorable,” only 23.1 found Kent “Unforarable.” However, the impeachment Republican was favored slightly less with 33.1 percent, but over half of the respondents (58.9 percent) found Herrera Beutler to be “Unfavorable.”

The Trafalgar group poll was conducted between October 30 and November 1, asking 682 likely 2022 top-two primary voters. The poll has a margin of error of ±3.68 percent and a 95 percent confidence level.

In response to the poll numbers, Byron Sanford, a representative for Kent, exclusively told Breitbart News that “We aren’t taking anything for granted, but it’s quite encouraging that we’re in first place against RINO impeachment voter Jaime Herrera Beutler, who’s in third place.”

“It’s a top-two primary… her favorability is down in the low thirties, and we’re beating her by nearly eight percentage points. It just goes to show that our grassroots campaign is gathering steam,” Sanford added.

Our @trafalgar_group #poll of likely ‘22 Top-Two Primary Election WA Congressional District 3 voters (10/31-11/01) shows @JaimeForUSRep, a Republican House member who voted to impeach #DonaldTrump, now trailing @joekent16jan19 See Report: https://t.co/9SC7jMVy1J pic.twitter.com/4sltRb2aFl

— The Trafalgar Group (@trafalgar_group) November 4, 2021

In an exclusive interview Kent had with Breitbart News earlier this year, he decided to run against the incumbent to try and unseat her after she voted for the impeachment of former President Donald Trump after the January 6 incident. “The Republican congresswoman who I voted for stabbed us in the back and voted for the impeachment of President Trump,” he said in the interview.

“She’d always kind of been a very weak Republican, very typical of the establishment. She voted against the construction of the border wall. She voted to keep our troops in Syria, our troops in Afghanistan,” he added. “She voted for Obamacare, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So I saw basically our entire country kind of being driven off the cliff by the Democrats, and I wanted to do something.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.