Public Policy Polling has two interesting articles on the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary, one on possible turnout and the other on undecided voters. The main conclusion of the first article is that PPP "would expect turnout to be closer to 300,000 than 200,000" and that this is " definitely where McAuliffe's money might end up making the difference," as he has "been able to connect with lower intensity voters, particularly over the airwaves, in a way that the other candidates have not."The second article examines undecided voters - the 66% who "don't know enough about Creigh Deeds or Brian Moran to have an opinion about them one way or the other" and the 55% who "don't know enough about McAuliffe." According to PPP, remaining undecideds are "disproportionately African American," "disproportionately not from northern Virginia," "more conservative and less liberal than primary voters as a whole." The first group leans heavily towards Terry McAuliffe, which is why endorsements by the Richmond Crusade for Voters and the Richmond Free Press are so important in the closing days of this campaign. The second group, "not from northern Virginia" voters, are likely to go for Creigh or Terry, according to PPP, and the fact that there are a lot of them is "bad news for Brian Moran." Finally, PPP says that the "more conservative and less liberal than primary voters" are more likely to "help Deeds, who does best with conservatives and worst with liberals, and hurt McAuliffe who does the best with liberals." The question on that last one is whether Deeds has the resources - money, field staff, etc. - to get out those voters.
All in all, on both the turnout and undecided pieces, I tend to agree with Josh Chernila's analysis of PPP's writeup, that it's "Good News for Deeds, McAuliffe...Moran? Not so Much." We'll see what happens in 11 days...
