The Seattle Times and the SeattlePI.com reported on the new King-5 poll earlier today.

Their basic take away: Nickels wins the primary. He's at 26 percent (2 points up from KING-5's earlier poll). Jan Drago is closest at 14 percent (a point down.)  The others.  Not so much.

However, here's some context worth noting.

SurveyUSA interviewed 1,050 adults from the city of Seattle 07/13/09 through 07/15/09. Of them, 943 identified themselves as being registered to vote. Of the registered voters, 507 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the primary. The election will be conducted entirely by mail; ballots begin to be mailed on July 29. The last day to vote is 08/18/09. The top two candidates emerging from the primary will face each other in the 11/03/09 general election.

In other words, they used interviews from 53 percent of the registered voters. But  the turnout in the primary will be closer to 30 percent.

The bigger pool (53 percent) skews the poll in favor of candidates with more name familiarity. As you go further into the voter file, you naturally get a less informed voter—53 percent of voters are less informed than the 30 percent who vote in primaries. (Off-year primaries!)

The voters in KING-5's sample are not paying as much attention and have a higher likelihood of not knowing candidates like Michael McGinn and Joe Mallahan and James Donaldson.

I'd say this is why Jan Drago—on the council for two decades now—and Nickels, came out on top.