“Bellwethers are indicated when you have candidates who are better representative of national forces, and here you have two extremely damaged candidates,” said pollster Doug Usher, who conducted the survey. “It’s hard to say there are national dynamics when these are candidates neither party wants to have. It’s clearly a candidate-centered race, and most of what voters are seeing is negative and personal in nature.”…

Consider the past week: Cuccinelli sought to defuse questions about his ties to the chief executive of Star Scientific by announcing in an on-line video that he had donated the value of the gifts, $18,000, to charity. (The businessman’s relationship with Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose family has received tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts, is under federal investigation.) One day later, Cuccinelli’s top adviser, Chris LaCivita, distributed a memo to the press complaining about “a disproportionate amount of negative scrutiny” and urging the media to bear down on a probe concerning foreign investment in McAuliffe’s former electrical car company.

The following day, the Republican Party called on McAuliffe to return a 2009 donation from a D.C. businessman linked to an illicit turnout drive for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“It’s almost like a weird, special election for the House,” Usher said. “It’s not like if McAuliffe wins you can say everything is going great for Democrats or if Cuccinelli wins it means curtains for their majority in the Senate.”