Republican Robert F. McDonnell has bounced back to a nine-point lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in the race to become Virginia’s next governor.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters finds McDonnell attracting 51% of the vote while Deeds picks up 42%.
Over the past two weeks, McDonnell’s support has gone up three percentage points while Deeds has lost four points. After closing to essentially a toss-up in mid-September, the race is back to where it was in early September, when the GOP hopeful held a nine-point advantage.
Don't you think that a lot of these polls are essentially wrong. I can't imagine this much back and forth over such a short period of time. I imagine Deeds is down a couple points, but this constant back and forth seems off to me. Then again I am not a professional pollster, so maybe this is normal.
Deeds is probably actually ahead in the polls, but the vast right wing conspiracy is likely rigging the results. And we can always count on ACORN to register undocumented refugees as well as formerly alive persons. And since most of us vote in several districts, we should not despair. But, just to be safe, we should whine a lot and ask for a recount now.
Asinine attempts at parody aside, these are curious results. I'm not sure what could have changed the momentum of the race so quickly, since there have been no real developments in the two weeks or so since the last Rasmussen poll. The more likely explanation, I think, is that the two-point gap was at the optimistic end of the MOE, and this is still a 6-7 point race, not a 3-4 point race.
Ok, I am ready to believe we are trending in the wrong direction. This is corroboration. I need to think about this more. But I have a couple of possible explanations. But I want to really think about this and do some research before saying more.
This is a good poll for Deeds compared to the one done by SurveyUSA (McDonnell +14) Plain and Simple, It's fallout over the negative attack ads put out by Deeds ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-a-nelson/why-creigh-deeds-lost-my_b_302127.html ) and blunders such as making Sen. Warner a liar and lying about McDonnell (From BD) "A CNN report points out a relatively small Deeds’ discrepancy: “The ad, however, makes a misleading claim: That McDonnell wrote the thesis when he was ‘months away’ from serving in office. In reality, he wrote it two years before his first election to the House of Delegates in 1991.” And "The Deeds campaign ads state that Bob McDonnell supports “no birth control for married adults.” The News Virginian says that’s another tall tale: “The claim that McDonnell voted against contraceptives for married adults is also false. He favored a bill allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives under a so-called conscience clause. The point was to support pharmacists — not target married adults.”
PWConservative, one point you make needs to be disputed. You cited Sophia Nelson's hit piece in Huffington Post as proof of your argument that the negative attack on McDonnell's thesis has backfired.
I read her piece, and frankly I'm unpleasantly surprised at Huff Post for running it. Nelson was exposed as a phony from her opening sentence, when she claimed she switched her party registration from Republican to Independent. WRONG!
As many helpful readers commented directly on that site, nobody can switch party registration in Virginia because we don't register by party to start with. So, not only is Nelson a liar, and most likely a McDonnell supporter and no moderate (as she claims), but she also doesn't know much about Virginia or she would have, at least, told a more plausible lie.
That said, I agree that the Deeds campaign has used the thesis in an ineffective manner, something I will write about in more depth later.
But I also think Deeds' honesty about needing to raise taxes to pay for transportation improvement has clearly hurt him. That's another issue that needs to be dealt with.
Personally, I believe if people are not willing to pay for goods and services they need, let em do without. It's called tough love.
If you don't want to sit in traffic for hours, pay for what you need or STF up! If McDonnell wins, every single Democrat ought to do all they can to not fix the roads with cheap gimmicks or by taking money from the most vulnerable in society. And Republicans should be the last people to point a finger about obstructionism. They can still teach black belt obstructionism to everybody else so they are hardly in a position to complain about anybody else doing it.
The simple truth is that unless people are confronted with the consequences of their choices they won't change. So, yeah, let 'em all sit in four hour traffic jams (including me). Because that's the only way to learn you get what you pay for.
I also agree that the negative ads are having a negative impact on Deeds' numbers. Not that I don't believe we should be running them -- there are some good and hard-hitting ads that are very effective. But I'm reminded of the Kilgore campaign four years ago, which was relentlessly negative.
Now, others may disagree with me, but that sort of constant negativity isn't well tolerated here in VA. Yes, many of us partisan types (on both sides) are used to voting against politician X, but independents and less political junkies are still taking in information and impressions (and will likely do so for another few weeks yet -- I know it sounds crazy, but some folks out there don't realize that there IS an election in just over a month's time!)
So I want to see some positive ads. And soon. (The Warner ad is a good start, but it's only one.) And I know I sound like a broken record, but if one of them could do some talking about Deeds' personal life, that would be VERY HELPFUL to people like many of us who are spreading the word one by one, but would like some support and message crafting from the campaign itself.
And perhaps the thesis has run its course? Not that we can't bring it back up as needed, but pretty much everyone I know is tired of hearing about it, since there is so little else being pushed.
Oh, and I might tack on that when there has been a lot of noise about the governor election, most notably after Deeds came back to win the primary and then when the thesis was first discovered, the numbers move, and they moved strongly in our direction. So that is good news for Dems, as the election moves into the final stages and more people become aware of it.
That said, it moved the most positively (the only polling I'm aware of that ever showed Deeds in the lead) after the primary, which was all POSITIVE in tone for Deeds.
You guys, you're just plain wrong about any polling "trend" and about the negative ads.
There's no trend. Rasmussen is the only pollster showing Deeds going the wrong way. And Rasmussen is notorious for having erratic polls due to using one-night samples. All other pollsters do multiple-night samples to avoid this problem. So either the new 9-point poll or the previous 2-point poll was a bad sample, or both were.
SUSA doesn't have a bad trend for Deeds, their last 3 polls went 55-40 to 54-42 to 55-41. That's ZERO change over time.
You can't compare SUSA's last poll with PPP's last poll and pretend there's a trend. You have to compare trend lines by the same pollster, and you have to look at the totality of polling in a given interval of time and the trend over time. Right now it's hard to say if Creigh is stuck in place or slipping back, there's not enough data. PPP's 5-point poll was contemporaneous with the SUSA and Rasmussen polls, not the exact same days but close enough with no intervening events changing the race. So we're in the dark on where the margin really stands--and we will be for awhile. WaPo's polls are the ones I trust the most for Virginia/D.C./Maryland races, but they won't poll again until late this month.
And Creigh's negative ads unquestionably helped Creigh, they've never hurt him. That's not disputable. He closed the gap dramatically because of them. McDonnell's behavior reinforces the point: he initially ignored them, which is what you do with a double-digit lead and uncertainty whether an opponent's attack will work, but then he responded vigorously. The delayed response means McDonnell's own polling showed he was slipping bigtime.
If Creigh is slipping, it's not because of his negative ads, it's probably because of taxes. He went out on a limb with candor about taxes for transportation improvements, and he's right on the policy while McDonnell is wrong. But no doubt Creigh exposed himself politically. He's obviously gambling that voters will be smart enough to realize we get what we pay for. But his Godawful post-debate press interview caught-on-tape, and now in a new Republican ad I just saw today, really forced his hand and made it much less of a gamble.
Since the first bad polls came out in early August, I've felt bad about the ultimate outcome in this. I still do. But there's no polling trend working against Creigh yet, and his negative ads have worked real well. I've been impressed by them.
Hmmm...I don't think I said that the negative ads have been ineffective, and I know that I've posted here about how useful they were.
That said, there isn't any positive energy (that I can personally) see in the Deeds campaign right now. To me (and this is my opinion only) the polls are reflecting what I'm seeing and hearing on the ground. People are fine voting against McDonnell (negative) but they are still not finding reasons to vote FOR Deeds (positive.)
Actually, I've been surprised by how low-key the response to the transportation tax has been. I expected things to be much louder and more more aggressive against it (and against Deeds). But as I've also said, McDonnell's campagin isn't the sharpest one we've seen in the box either.
Hey folks, no need to despair. ACORN can still create or save thousands of votes. All we have to do is stay close. Dirty deeds can sneak us across the finish line.
Going door to door Deeds voters commonly told Me they are "Registered Democrats" Its a prevalent mistake, I attend GMU, There is noticeable backlash against the negativity, particularly among female students, the attacks are transparent and only serve to lower the integrity of this race.
PWConservative, your door-to-door anecdotes on "backlash" aren't worth anything. I've done door-to-door countless times last year and this year, and you learn nothing about the broader universe of voters, even in your own region, in a statewide race.
All the data shows very straightforwardly that Deeds' attacks are working, that he closed the gap because of them. And there's nothing about any of the ads that is troublesome for Deeds, I've seen them all. They're all well-done ads.
McDonnell's response ads actually are pretty good, too, but he really is a hard right wingnut and there's a limit to how much he can escape that. But he's still ahead because a majority of voters just don't care about that this year.
Now you can profit from positive or negative price movement.
Cfds, or spread trading, is based on
price differential from start to close, enabling one to profit even in an erratic market
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Posts
Don't you think that a lot of these polls are essentially wrong. I can't imagine this much back and forth over such a short period of time. I imagine Deeds is down a couple points, but this constant back and forth seems off to me. Then again I am not a professional pollster, so maybe this is normal.
ReplyDeleteDeeds is probably actually ahead in the polls, but the vast right wing conspiracy is likely rigging the results. And we can always count on ACORN to register undocumented refugees as well as formerly alive persons. And since most of us vote in several districts, we should not despair. But, just to be safe, we should whine a lot and ask for a recount now.
ReplyDeleteAsinine attempts at parody aside, these are curious results. I'm not sure what could have changed the momentum of the race so quickly, since there have been no real developments in the two weeks or so since the last Rasmussen poll. The more likely explanation, I think, is that the two-point gap was at the optimistic end of the MOE, and this is still a 6-7 point race, not a 3-4 point race.
ReplyDeleteOk, I am ready to believe we are trending in the wrong direction. This is corroboration. I need to think about this more. But I have a couple of possible explanations. But I want to really think about this and do some research before saying more.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good poll for Deeds compared to the one done by SurveyUSA (McDonnell +14)
ReplyDeletePlain and Simple, It's fallout over the negative attack ads put out by Deeds ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-a-nelson/why-creigh-deeds-lost-my_b_302127.html ) and blunders such as making Sen. Warner a liar and lying about McDonnell (From BD) "A CNN report points out a relatively small Deeds’ discrepancy: “The ad, however, makes a misleading claim: That McDonnell wrote the thesis when he was ‘months away’ from serving in office. In reality, he wrote it two years before his first election to the House of Delegates in 1991.”
And
"The Deeds campaign ads state that Bob McDonnell supports “no birth control for married adults.” The News Virginian says that’s another tall tale: “The claim that McDonnell voted against contraceptives for married adults is also false. He favored a bill allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives under a so-called conscience clause. The point was to support pharmacists — not target married adults.”
PWConservative, one point you make needs to be disputed. You cited Sophia Nelson's hit piece in Huffington Post as proof of your argument that the negative attack on McDonnell's thesis has backfired.
ReplyDeleteI read her piece, and frankly I'm unpleasantly surprised at Huff Post for running it. Nelson was exposed as a phony from her opening sentence, when she claimed she switched her party registration from Republican to Independent. WRONG!
As many helpful readers commented directly on that site, nobody can switch party registration in Virginia because we don't register by party to start with. So, not only is Nelson a liar, and most likely a McDonnell supporter and no moderate (as she claims), but she also doesn't know much about Virginia or she would have, at least, told a more plausible lie.
That said, I agree that the Deeds campaign has used the thesis in an ineffective manner, something I will write about in more depth later.
But I also think Deeds' honesty about needing to raise taxes to pay for transportation improvement has clearly hurt him. That's another issue that needs to be dealt with.
Personally, I believe if people are not willing to pay for goods and services they need, let em do without. It's called tough love.
If you don't want to sit in traffic for hours, pay for what you need or STF up! If McDonnell wins, every single Democrat ought to do all they can to not fix the roads with cheap gimmicks or by taking money from the most vulnerable in society. And Republicans should be the last people to point a finger about obstructionism. They can still teach black belt obstructionism to everybody else so they are hardly in a position to complain about anybody else doing it.
The simple truth is that unless people are confronted with the consequences of their choices they won't change. So, yeah, let 'em all sit in four hour traffic jams (including me). Because that's the only way to learn you get what you pay for.
I also agree that the negative ads are having a negative impact on Deeds' numbers. Not that I don't believe we should be running them -- there are some good and hard-hitting ads that are very effective. But I'm reminded of the Kilgore campaign four years ago, which was relentlessly negative.
ReplyDeleteNow, others may disagree with me, but that sort of constant negativity isn't well tolerated here in VA. Yes, many of us partisan types (on both sides) are used to voting against politician X, but independents and less political junkies are still taking in information and impressions (and will likely do so for another few weeks yet -- I know it sounds crazy, but some folks out there don't realize that there IS an election in just over a month's time!)
So I want to see some positive ads. And soon. (The Warner ad is a good start, but it's only one.) And I know I sound like a broken record, but if one of them could do some talking about Deeds' personal life, that would be VERY HELPFUL to people like many of us who are spreading the word one by one, but would like some support and message crafting from the campaign itself.
And perhaps the thesis has run its course? Not that we can't bring it back up as needed, but pretty much everyone I know is tired of hearing about it, since there is so little else being pushed.
Oh, and I might tack on that when there has been a lot of noise about the governor election, most notably after Deeds came back to win the primary and then when the thesis was first discovered, the numbers move, and they moved strongly in our direction. So that is good news for Dems, as the election moves into the final stages and more people become aware of it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it moved the most positively (the only polling I'm aware of that ever showed Deeds in the lead) after the primary, which was all POSITIVE in tone for Deeds.
Just saying.
You guys, you're just plain wrong about any polling "trend" and about the negative ads.
ReplyDeleteThere's no trend. Rasmussen is the only pollster showing Deeds going the wrong way. And Rasmussen is notorious for having erratic polls due to using one-night samples. All other pollsters do multiple-night samples to avoid this problem. So either the new 9-point poll or the previous 2-point poll was a bad sample, or both were.
SUSA doesn't have a bad trend for Deeds, their last 3 polls went 55-40 to 54-42 to 55-41. That's ZERO change over time.
You can't compare SUSA's last poll with PPP's last poll and pretend there's a trend. You have to compare trend lines by the same pollster, and you have to look at the totality of polling in a given interval of time and the trend over time. Right now it's hard to say if Creigh is stuck in place or slipping back, there's not enough data. PPP's 5-point poll was contemporaneous with the SUSA and Rasmussen polls, not the exact same days but close enough with no intervening events changing the race. So we're in the dark on where the margin really stands--and we will be for awhile. WaPo's polls are the ones I trust the most for Virginia/D.C./Maryland races, but they won't poll again until late this month.
And Creigh's negative ads unquestionably helped Creigh, they've never hurt him. That's not disputable. He closed the gap dramatically because of them. McDonnell's behavior reinforces the point: he initially ignored them, which is what you do with a double-digit lead and uncertainty whether an opponent's attack will work, but then he responded vigorously. The delayed response means McDonnell's own polling showed he was slipping bigtime.
If Creigh is slipping, it's not because of his negative ads, it's probably because of taxes. He went out on a limb with candor about taxes for transportation improvements, and he's right on the policy while McDonnell is wrong. But no doubt Creigh exposed himself politically. He's obviously gambling that voters will be smart enough to realize we get what we pay for. But his Godawful post-debate press interview caught-on-tape, and now in a new Republican ad I just saw today, really forced his hand and made it much less of a gamble.
Since the first bad polls came out in early August, I've felt bad about the ultimate outcome in this. I still do. But there's no polling trend working against Creigh yet, and his negative ads have worked real well. I've been impressed by them.
Hmmm...I don't think I said that the negative ads have been ineffective, and I know that I've posted here about how useful they were.
ReplyDeleteThat said, there isn't any positive energy (that I can personally) see in the Deeds campaign right now. To me (and this is my opinion only) the polls are reflecting what I'm seeing and hearing on the ground. People are fine voting against McDonnell (negative) but they are still not finding reasons to vote FOR Deeds (positive.)
Actually, I've been surprised by how low-key the response to the transportation tax has been. I expected things to be much louder and more more aggressive against it (and against Deeds). But as I've also said, McDonnell's campagin isn't the sharpest one we've seen in the box either.
Hey folks, no need to despair. ACORN can still create or save thousands of votes. All we have to do is stay close. Dirty deeds can sneak us across the finish line.
ReplyDeleteGoing door to door Deeds voters commonly told Me they are "Registered Democrats" Its a prevalent mistake, I attend GMU, There is noticeable backlash against the negativity, particularly among female students, the attacks are transparent and only serve to lower the integrity of this race.
ReplyDeletePWConservative, your door-to-door anecdotes on "backlash" aren't worth anything. I've done door-to-door countless times last year and this year, and you learn nothing about the broader universe of voters, even in your own region, in a statewide race.
ReplyDeleteAll the data shows very straightforwardly that Deeds' attacks are working, that he closed the gap because of them. And there's nothing about any of the ads that is troublesome for Deeds, I've seen them all. They're all well-done ads.
McDonnell's response ads actually are pretty good, too, but he really is a hard right wingnut and there's a limit to how much he can escape that. But he's still ahead because a majority of voters just don't care about that this year.
There's no evidence whatsoever of "backlash."