Just 24 hours before Seattle's August 18 primary, the national polling group SurveyUSA announced that incumbent mayor Greg Nickels was in the lead with 26 percent of the vote, while his challengers, Joe Mallahan and Mike McGinn, were both at least four points behind him. A few days previous, SurveyUSA had also announced its findings in the race for King County executive: Democrat Dow Constantine was getting 20 percent of the vote while Republican Susan Hutchison was getting 37 percent.

Both of those polls were way off.

McGinn, who SurveyUSA had in last place going into the primary, ended up coming in first with 27.7 percent of the vote—almost seven points more than SurveyUSA had predicted. To its credit, SurveyUSA had called that race "a jump-ball." But in the executive's race, where no such disclaimer was made, SurveyUSA seriously underestimated Constantine's strength (he finished with 27 percent of the vote, seven points more than predicted) while overestimating Hutchison's (she finished with 33 percent, four points less than predicted). "We should do better than that," admitted Jay Leve, spokesman for SurveyUSA.

In bigger elections, and in bigger cities, this wouldn't be a problem. Other polling companies would be in the mix, and hopefully at least one would produce accurate results. But in this city, in this election, SurveyUSA has been pretty much the only game in town—in part as a result of the down economy. Public polls are expensive, and KING 5 Television, which pays for SurveyUSA's local polling, is essentially the only news outlet in Seattle with money to spare.

When the polling is as wrong as it has been so far, old complaints about the company's conservative tilt surface—usually based on studies conducted after the 2006 and 2008 federal elections that found SurveyUSA's polling was biased toward Republicans. Leve pointed out, however, that a 2004 study showed SurveyUSA's polling skewed too liberal that year, and added: "I have zero stake in steering it one way or another."

Another common complaint: SurveyUSA can't reach cell-phone users. "That's an absolutely legitimate concern," Leve admitted.

Many younger voters use only cell phones, and an inability to survey these voters—who also tend to be more liberal and excited about grassroots campaigns—may account in part for SurveyUSA's trouble predicting actual support for Constantine and McGinn.

Fortunately, as the general election nears, others are stepping into the fray. A poll put out by the University of Washington on October 27 found Constantine beating Hutchison by 13 points—a very different finding than that of SurveyUSA's most recent poll, which had Constantine behind by five points.

Not that new polling pleases everyone. The UW's poll also found McGinn trailing by 10 points, and McGinn's campaign immediately attacked one of the pollsters, saying, "His polls don't seem to reflect reality" and mocking misspellings in his online presentation of the full poll details.

The pollster, Matt Barreto, called the attacks "hilarious."