Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee's campaign glommed onto one positive factoid from the recent poll by local pollster Strategies 360 that otherwise hit the Inslee camp with the bad news that Republican Rob McKenna was beating Inslee 46-39.

The good stat the Democrats found: Inslee actually beats McKenna by one point, 46-45, among voters who are familiar with both candidates.

In a fundraising letter the Inslee campaign put out immediately after the poll came out this week, they used the one-point advantage to  tell supporters they simply need more money to get Inslee's name out there.

From the Inslee fundraising appeal:

If we can get Jay’s message out, we win.

That’s what new polling just released by Strategies 360 tells us. I’ve read a lot of polls over the years, and this poll shows clearly that when people know both Jay and our opponent, they vote for Jay.

The poll also shows what we've known all along -- we have a lot of work to do. While we would win among voters who know both candidates, our opponent’s statewide name recognition is giving him a 46 - 39 advantage among likely voters, many of whom just aren’t familiar with Jay yet.

There are some problems with that favorable spin, though. First of all, the subset of people polled who know both candidates, about a third of the total poll, come from King County and "King County is obviously overwhelmingly Democratic," says Strategies 360 communications director Paul Queary.

Additionally, when you're dealing with a subset in any poll, the room for error "goes up substantially." Queary estimates that while the overall sample has a margin of error of around 4 percent, the smaller group that knows both candidates could be as much as eight points.

When you're dealing at that level the conclusions become "murky," he says.