Analysts weigh in on Reichert-Burner primary matchup

Both sides were spinning fast in the hours after Tuesday evening’s primary in the hotly contended race for the 8th Congressional District seat.

“This is a significant defeat for Burner who made it clear that she needed to outpoll Reichert in the primary to keep her national fundraising base engaged and spent over half a million dollars in the loss,” the National Republican Congressional Committee wrote in a post-primary memo, referring to U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert’s 48 percent to 44 percent outpacing of businesswoman Darcy Burner.

“In fact, despite his turnout advantages, the incumbent has been held under 50 percent of the primary vote, and the combined Democratic vote is greater than the Republican vote,” Burner pollster Celinda Lake wrote in a memo of her own today. “This is sobering news for Reichert.”

Who’s right?

PolitickerWA.com asked some of Washington, DC’s top political odds makers if Reichert’s narrow primary edge mean that he has a leg up heading into the fall, or does the two-term incumbent’s failure to reach 50 percent mean that he is vulnerable.

Most said that the results showed that Burner and Reichert, who were separated by just 7,000 votes in their 2006 race, were headed for a tough rematch.

Politicker.com’s Pindell Report ranks the Burner-Reichert race as the most competitive U.S. House race in the country.

“Overall, the results basically tell us what we already knew – that this race is going to be extremely close on Election Day,” said Tim Sahd, editor of House Race Hotline.

Nathan Gonzales, an analyst for the Rothenberg Political Report, said the race was in the tossup to slightly lean Republican category and that the results would do little to change the grading of the contest. While Reichert could have certainly fared worse in the primary, Gonzalez said, he was in for a dogfight.

But Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia and the author of the Crystal Ball, said the results showed that Reichert maintained a small lead in the race.

“The four percent primary margin for Reichert is a decent argument that he is holding his own and maintaining his usual narrow lead as the incumbent in a tough district,” explained Sabato.

What most of the analysts agreed on was that one should be careful in reading too far into the primary. Without a presidential race at the top of the ticket, it was hard to get a full picture of how November’s general election might play out.

“As long as the results are close, I don’t think it says a lot. While it is true that Burner finished ahead in the 2006 primary, the presence of the presidential race atop the ballot here should help her considerably this year,” said David Wasserman, an analyst for the Cook Political Report.

And then there’s the general unpredictability of a mid-August primary.

“I also recognize that the primary results are squirrelly. One shouldn’t read too much into them,” said Sabato.