Not the most thrilling poll results I've ever seen:Creigh Deeds' post-primary bounce in Virginia appears to have worn out after a month off the airwaves, and Bob McDonnell now holds a 49-43 lead in the contest to become the state's next Governor.Meanwhile, as if that's not bad enough, "In the race for Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling leads Jody Wagner 46-40, and for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is up 45-38 on Steve Shannon."
The candidates are doing about an equally good job of uniting their parties around them, but McDonnell has a 54-33 advantage among independents fueling his overall advantage.
So...not that this should be a big surprise to any of us, but we've got our work cut out for us this year, big time. For starters, as much as Democratic activists believe that McDonnell/Bolling/Cooch is a far-right-wing ticket, the normal voter (e.g., not tuned in 24/7 like many of us are) may not be seeing it that way. Also keep in mind that the Republicans are going to spend a lot of money trying to convince people that they're reasonable, "moderate," etc., even though we know that this isn't the case. However, their strategy could work. The other day, I watched Bob McDonnell's July 4th video and was impressed with the political makeover he's undergoing. Hell, I even found myself sort of liking him by the end, which is amazing considering how strongly I find McDonnell's views on social issues, the environment, and pretty much everything else to be abhorrent. Finally, from everything I've been seeing for months now, the Republicans are the ones fired up this year, unlike in 2005 when Democrats and independents were sick and tired of Bush, DeLay, and Republicans in general.
A few more interesting findings from the PPP poll:
*86% of voters say they're "solidly committed" to their candidate, with just 14% saying there's a chance they could vote for another candidate. Are we going to spend the next 4 months battling over those 14%? It's possible.
*It looks like McDonnell and Deeds have locked down their respective parties. The advantage for McDonnell comes from his 54%-33% among independents.
*For LG, it also looks like the candidates have their party bases locked down, but Bolling has an 18-point lead over Wagner among independents. That's the challenge.
*For AG, same deal pretty much, with parties locked down and Cooch holding an 18-point lead over Shannon among independents.
*I find some of the numbers broken down by "race" to be a bit odd. Bob McDonnell not only has an 18-point lead among whites, but also an 11-point lead among Hispanics? Huh? I'm also surprised that McDonnell would have even 16% of the African American vote. Strange.
*Deeds holds a huge lead in far southwestern Virginia, 54%-33%, as well as in NOVA (53%-38%), but trails everywhere else. McDonnell leads by a particularly large margin in southeastern Virginia (51%-33%) and also the 804 area code (57%-40%) and 540 area code (54%-39%). Southside is closer, with McDonnell ahead 50%-43%.
Look, there's no reason to be unduly alarmed at the numbers from one poll in early July, but on the other hand, we've got a lot of work to do if we're going to fire up Democrats and moderates/independents for our ticket this year. Sad to say, but I think we're going to have to really let people know how extreme the Republican candidates are, not just tout the virtues of our candidates. We're also going to need to get the progressive, netroots activist base fired up, and not just at the last minute either. I sure hope the "powers that be" understand that.
P.S. I really like PPP, think they do great work and have no particular reason - except for the strange results on Hispanic voters - to doubt these results.
UPDATE: Tom Jensen of PPP emailed me to say, "The Hispanic numbers are based on something like 12 interviews so that’s why they seem erratic…I’m sure McDonnell isn’t really going to win the Hispanic vote but when you have a sample size of around 600 for the overall poll and then a crosstab for a small voting bloc there’s high potential for that number to be skewed."
