GOP challenger Dino Rossi has gained ground on incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) over the past six weeks according to the latest Elway poll.

According to an earlier Elway poll, Rossi trailed Murray 34 percent to 51 percent at the beginning of May, but now trails by just 7 points—40 percent to 47 percent.



The poll also indicated that the upcoming race and election should be intensely partisan, with 89 percent of Democrats supporting Murray and 84 percent of Republicans supporting Rossi.

According to the poll, “Had this been a survey of just partisans, Murray would have had a 20 point lead (54 percent to 34 percent) because of the larger number of Democrats. But this is Washington, where Independents decide statewide elections because neither party on its own can elect  anyone."

Rossi leads in independent support 45 percent to 32 percent, but he'll need to win a much greater margin of that vote to pull off a win.

Undecided voters, Independents and a huge voter turnout, then, are the keys to Rossi's potential success.

Although Murray is below 50 percent overall in this survey, Elway claims that in order for Rossi to win, he would need to convince 85 percent of undecided voters to vote for him, which is a stretch because incumbents have greater voter recognition, and if undecided voters were not going to vote for an incumbent they’d know it already.

Murray has an advantage over Rossi with voters who are most likely to turn out on election day, but the higher voter turn out, the more votes Rossi is likely to get.

This is probably the biggest reason why the leading Tea Party candidate Clint Didier will be a serious challenge to Rossi. In polls, Rossi leads Didier by a large margin, but the the insurgent sect of the Republican party is subtracting from the energy Rossi needs to generate in order to get additional voter turnout.