Poll: McAuliffe only +2 in Virginia?

Oh, my. According to the latest poll from Emerson College:

According to a new poll, Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli has shrunk to 2 points in the Virginia gubernatorial race (42% to 40%, with Libertarian Robert Sarvis at 13%). At the beginning of the month, McAuliffe was up five points (43% to 38%), suggesting Cuccinelli is gaining momentum going into the last weekend of the election. The survey was conducted October 25 to October 30, with 874 likely voters at a 3.24% margin of error.

Despite his slim lead in the poll, 55 percent of Virginia likely voters believe that McAuliffe will be elected, with only 28 percent predicting that Cuccinelli will be their next governor. Twenty percent of self-identified independents are in support of Sarvis, who is leeching votes from Cuccinelli with 11 percent of Republicans supporting his candidacy versus only 6 percent of Democrats who said they would vote for him.

Advertisement

I confess that I find that split a just a little eyebrow-raising, but the improvement from their own poll a month back could perhaps support Wednesday’s Quinnipiac poll that suggested McAuliffe was “clinging” to the race by a scant 4 points and that ergo the race’s momentum might be moving in Team Cuccinelli’s direction. Anyhow, that brings the RCP average to +7.7 points for McAuliffe, and there was another Hampton University poll from this last week that suggested that McAuliffe was ahead by 6 points. Cuccinelli definitely hasn’t given up, though, and he’s rolling with Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal, and now Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Ron Paul on the campaign trail for their popular conservative support to try and up Republican turnout:

Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Ron Paul will campaign with Ken Cuccinelli in the final days of the Virginia governor’s race, sources told POLITICO.

The Wisconsin governor will spend Saturday with the Republican candidate for governor in Spotsylvania and Prince William counties.

The Florida senator has committed to appear Monday, on the eve of the election, in Warrenton and Culpeper.

The former Texas congressman will speak at a rally that evening in Richmond.

But Team McAuliffe is still raking it in, with appearances by President Obama and Joe Biden on tap. Via WaPo:

For the two weeks before the election, Virginia law requires candidates to report all large donations within a day, providing nearly a real-time look at the flow of cash through the political spigots. At the top of the ballot, almost all of the money is flowing in one direction.

On Wednesday, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, McAuliffe (D) reported contributions of $510,000, with more than half that total coming in the form of in-kind donations from the state Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and a pair of labor unions.

For the same day, Cuccinelli reported raising just $12,000 — roughly 1/50th of McAuliffe’s haul. In the race overall, McAuliffe has now raised more than $35 million, nearly double Cuccinelli’s total.

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement