2022 United States Senate election in Washington

The 2022 United States Senate election in Washington was held on November 8, 2022, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Washington. Incumbent senator Patty Murray was first elected in 1992 with 54% of the vote to succeed retiring fellow Democrat Brock Adams. Murray won re-election to a fifth term in 2016 with 59% of the vote.

2022 United States Senate election in Washington

November 8, 2022 (2022-11-08)
 
Candidate Patty Murray Tiffany Smiley
Party Democratic Republican
Popular vote 1,741,827 1,299,322
Percentage 57.2% 42.6%

Murray:      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%      >90%
Smiley:      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%      >90%
Tie:      40–50%      50%
     No data

U.S. senator before election

Patty Murray
Democratic

Elected U.S. senator

Patty Murray
Democratic

Because Washington has a blanket primary system, parties did not nominate their own candidates to run in the general election. Instead, every candidate appeared on the same ballot, regardless of their party affiliation. The top two candidates in the August 2 nonpartisan blanket primary then advanced to the general election. Murray received 52.2% of the primary vote and advanced to face Republican Tiffany Smiley.

Although Washington has been a reliably blue state for over 30 years, many polls showed that Murray only had a narrow lead over Smiley, and some polls had Smiley within the margin of error. A couple of late polls had the two candidates tied; such polls caused most pundits to downgrade their forecast from "safe Democratic" to "likely Democratic", and Republicans believed that Smiley had a chance of pulling off an upset. Despite the predictions of a close race, Murray defeated Smiley and won re-election to a sixth term by a 14.5-point margin. Although this was a significantly larger margin of victory for Murray than what was expected, it was fairly consistent with Washington's partisan lean. Smiley conceded the following day. Despite her loss, she made significant gains in several counties, particularly in the Southwestern and Eastern parts of the state.

Following the election, Murray was elected president pro tempore for the 118th Congress, becoming the first woman to hold the role.

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