A new KING 5 poll shows the congressional race between Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Darcy Burner is up for grabs and the Republican challenger to Senate incumbent Maria Cantwell is gaining ground.

Reichert is a well-known sheriff turned congressman. Burner is a former Microsoft manager making her first run for political office.

And it's a race that's heating up.

In a KING 5 tracking poll last month Republican Dave Reichert had a comfortable lead: 54 percent to Democrat Darcy Burner with 41 percent.

Now, with six weeks left to go, SurveyUSA finds Reichert with 50 percent, Burner at 48 percent The race is now within the margin of error.

This latest poll identifies not just registered voters, but likely voters.

"At some point, Republicans and the Reichert campaign have to acknowledge that they're in a dog fight.  This is not being driven by the personalities of the two candidates. It's being driven by the national political mood," said Chris Vance, a principal with the PR firm The Gallitan Group and the former state GOP chairman.

On some votes, Reichert has distanced himself from the Bush administration, but he has not shied away from campaigning with the president, and Democrats believe that's helping Burner.

"He's got a disadvantage, which is he's got a running mate in this race which is George Bush," said state democratic chairman Dwight Pelz.

In a suburban swing district, the battleground is about to shift to the TV ads.

"The classic thing you do if you're the incumbent and you have a challenger who's not very well known and you find yourself in a close race is you need to go out and define the challenger for the public," noted Vance.

Meanwhile, the race for U.S. senate is tightening, but Democrat Maria Cantwell is still in the lead.

A month ago, she was at 53 percent, a 17-point lead over Republican Mike McGavick.

Our new SurveyUSA poll finds Cantwell holding steady, but McGavick gaining ground, now at 42 percent.  Will the race get any closer?

"A rollercoaster goes down and it goes back up and it goes back down and it goes back up, that's what his polls have been," said Pelz.

Vance countered.

"I've got a lot of years at looking at polling data in Washington state, and there's tremendous fluidity a lot of movement at the end, we're a very independent state," he said.

In many respects, voters are just now starting to pay attention, and these are well-funded candidates with millions of dollars in the bank ready to be spent on TV commercials and outside groups looking at the poll numbers and ready to chip in millions of dollars more.