Posted on 10/08/2013 1:06:45 PM PDT by C19fan
The first round of Virginia gubernatorial polls conducted since the start of the government shutdown (remember: NoVa. Bureaucrats and contractors. SO many bureaucrats and contractors.) are out; I definitely wouldnt go so far as to say that Cuccinelli doomed, but with both camps running ads disparaging the shutdown and trying to link to other guy to the DC dysfunction, it doesnt look like the situation has improved Cuccinellis fortunes. The first poll, via Politico, has McAuliffe at 54 percent and Cuccinelli at 44 percent in a one-to-one contest:
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Bearing Drift’s take:
http://bearingdrift.com/2013/10/08/two-new-polls-two-new-shots-under-the-waterline-for-the-gop/
Two new polls are out, one from Politico and another from Christopher Newport University that have crushing headline numbers for the GOP statewide candidates.
First, the Politico poll, which shows Terry McAuliffe with a 44-35 lead over Ken Cuccinelli. Libertarian Robert Sarvis pulls a strong 12 percent.
You can roam through the cross tabs to find what numbers interest you. But for me, the fascinating figures are what the race would look like without Sarvis on the ballot. With Sarvis, the gender gap between McAuliffe and Cuccinelli is eight points. Without Sarvis, it expands to 10.
On the partisan split, Cuccinelli bleeds 11 percent of the GOP vote to Sarvis, while McAuliffe loses six percent of Democrats. Take Sarvis out of the equation and the partisans settle more closely to their standard bearers. But independents go overwhelmingly to McAuliffe.
Not that independents like McAuliffe. Among them, his unfavorable rating is 54 percent. But Cuccinelli manages to fair even worse 60 percent of independents just dont like him.
There are other indicators race and age which show Sarvis holding the balance.
The CNU poll, which may be an outlier, has some interesting bits on the downticket races. It shows Democrat Ralph Northam with a whopping 11 point lead among likely voters. In the AG race between Mark Obenshain and Mark Herring, it shows Herring with a three-point advantage.
Even if this poll is out of whack with others, its the headlines that matter, and they are not good at all for the GOP. The Politico poll, in particular, is a gut punch.
At the end of August, when Larry Sabato changed his rating on the governors race to leans Democratic, I speculated we could see a repeat of the 2001 election, where the only Republican to win statewide was Jerry Kilgore.
Some may recall that 2001 was the last time the Libertarians fielded a gubernatorial candidate. Bill Redpath. He garnered a paltry .77 percent of the vote. The key difference this time out is that voters appear to loathe, in their bones, the major party candidates. Sarvis is an empty vessel largely unknown, and therefore a prime candidate for the none of the above vote.
That means Sarvis has a huge opportunity. Im becoming more convinced that he will do well enough to give the party a ballot slot in the next few elections. And also that his vote will hold the eventual winner under 50 percent.
Given his political connections, how appropriate for McAwful to win with a “Clintonian plurality”.
Guess this means the Dems will hold on to the Presidency in 2016 and keep control of the Senate in 2014.
That is exactly what it means. The country - at least, the country we once had - is lost.
Kinda my read on it as well.
The danger is Texas; if TX turns blue, the GOP is finished as a national party. They’ll still be strong in the South, but they become a regional party at that point.
West Coast and the Northeast are solid blue.
“Libertarian” suicide again.
Do you really think that McAuliffe has a chance? I defer to the still-conservative bulk of the state to call BS on most leftist polls.
it doesnt look like the situation has improved Cuccinellis fortunes.
its my recollection than McAulliffe was already leading and I am not sure the shutdown has increased that lead considerably
not being a Virginian I am not sure of the particulars in Virginia as to why the GOP guy was behind before now - other than the growth of Washington D.C. business in northern virginia these last five years under a Dim WH
This just proves that “moderate” independents are just liberals who are ashamed of the title.
I hope you are right.
But I am concerned that what happened in New Jersey and New England has happened in Va. In the latter case, liberal swine from NYC and Philly moved into Jersey in such numbers tha they changed the voting demographics. In New England, they moved in from Boston and NYC and changed the voting demographics there.
In Va, I see the same thing happenning with Washington, DC and Baltimore.
Like rats, they are out-breeding us.
It didn’t help Cuc when he distanced himself from Ted Cruz.
Couple weeks ago the Media Criminals said Germany was “on a knife’s edge” and “neck and neck”.
Merkel won by 17 points.
The “still-conservative bulk” has been overwhelmed by the growth in NoVa which has more in common with New York than the rest of Virginia.
Their incubators are the Universities.
Wow. Lonegan is closer to Booker in NJ than Cucinelli is to McCauliffe in Va. The Republic is doomed.
Cucinelli will lose.
A lot of dims have moved into NoVa, and they recognize McAwful from his servicing the Clintons. The independents that have moved here are the same - they don’t know anything about Cuccinelli, but they have at least heard of McAwful.
This race could be a re-run of the 2012 presidential election, I fear.
VA was already becoming a solid blue state. Immigration and domestic migration into NoVA have changed the demographics of the state.
Sounds like an Oregon situation developing. In Oregon, if you want to win, you only need to win one part of the state; specifically, Multnomah County.
A massive chunk of Oregon’s total population lives right there.
And it’s about as blue as you can imagine.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.