Virginia 2009 Megathread

[Sam Spade]

Looking at the polling, it looks like a consolidation last-minute move in favor of Deeds that sometimes happens in primaries, but when backed up by a couple of polls (especially the one I trust in primaries - SUSA) means it is probably occurring.

Although it is nearly impossible to predict primaries, I would be surprised if Deeds lost this one.

[Sam Spade]

Wow, is this race over?  Sorry I haven't been paying attention to it, there's a governor's race that actually matters going on to the north

No, the race is far from over.  Deeds is down, but he'll be fine in the end, and manage a state that isn't full of corruption.

Is there anything short of pure optimism that makes you think he can overcome what has become a double-digit deficit?

That PPP and SUSA aren't even attempting to weight their polls for the 2008 vote is a bad sign for the polling. Yes, the differential turnout for 2009 compared to 2008 will be bad for the Democrats---but not nearly that bad. They should be weighting to around a 2008 tie, which makes the race quite competitive in both polls.

They didn't weight at all in 2008, and nailed it perfectly. I didn't hear you complaining then.

Oh, I would. Pollsters should always weight, and they didn't nail it perfectly. That's what I like about British polling; it's miles ahead of American in that way.

Too bad it isn't in terms of accuracy.  Go ask Al.

Couple of points:
1) Summer polling sucks.  Repeat.
2) That being said, folks seem to forget that pre-2008, pretty much every Virginia election had a party ID of 2-3 points GOP advantage.  I haven't forgotten.

[Sam Spade]

R2000/Daily Kos:

McDonnell 51%
Deeds 43%

http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2009/8/5/VA/321

Weighted to 2008 party ID.  Obviously, you have to keep the troops enthused.

My last observation on the weighting issue is this:  I have no clue what Virginia will weight as come November with the exit polls.  But I am willing to bet considerable money it will not be Dem +6.

[Sam Spade]

I don't think 83 interviews is enough to read anything, regardless of the quality of the sample.  I'm pretty sure that could be within the MOE of the previous sample results (no, I do not have a calculator here in front of me).

[Sam Spade]

Is Bloomberg just trying to get me to vote for Thompson just to stop this crap?

[Sam Spade]

Is Bloomberg just trying to get me to vote for Thompson just to stop this crap?

Why not Christopher or Dobrian?

Well Carl, I'm not voting for Bloomberg and presently intend on voting third-party.  But if I decide that I've had enough of his control-freak, meddling attitude, I may just go for the neutered Negro.  Especially if its close - every so often this city needs to be reminded how close to incompetence it really is.

Stuff like this makes me lean towards the latter option.

[Sam Spade]

PPP says Deeds has gained on McDonnell.

They say he's down by 14 instead of 15 last time.  Big deal.

[Sam Spade]

I mean, Obama has allowed his name to be part of a number of pushes by the Deeds campaign, as a tribute to Obama's friendship with Tim Kaine, nothing more, nothing less


Wouldn't surprise me the least to see a lot of variation in polling from high single digits to medium double digits coming into election day, I wouldn't over-interpret anything though

Haven't seen any poll out of the last 10 have Deeds within a single-digit margin though.  Doesn't mean it can't occur on election day, of course, just pointing it out.

[Sam Spade]

Oh and one last thing Sam: don't even think about responding to me or asking me to respond further to your childishness.  Be assured that every subsequent comment including your original retort will be forwarded to my attorney.  

You just stepped in it big time.

My, what big words and what a small dick.

[Sam Spade]

They didn't call it right at the close! Success!

What is the declaration? "Too early to call"?

Based on the tone, my bet is that their waiting for a few votes to show up to prove that there hasn't been a complete exit poll screwup, as opposed to a minor one.  They usually do that when the exit poll shows a result under 20%, and at most under 10% (different people do it differently).

[Sam Spade]

zzzzzzzzz....  Calm down folks - we'll find out soon enough.

[Sam Spade]

A precinct here, a precinct there.  Need to get full counties in.

[Sam Spade]

Heh.  Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC with Pat Buchanan.  A combo worth watching.

[Sam Spade]

uh-oh.  McDonnell winning Buchanan now. (official silly post of evening)

[Sam Spade]

I'll post some more here soon, but this one is over and it will be double-digits unless there's something unexpected in NoVA.

King & Queen county has a lot of blacks, so I would read too much there.

[Sam Spade]

I'll post some more here soon, but this one is over and it will be double-digits unless there's something unexpected in NoVA.

King & Queen county has a lot of blacks, so I would read too much there.

Does that suggest very low black turnout?

Well, I think that, in comparison to Obama, any black turnout Deeds was going to get was going to be low, but yes.

[Sam Spade]

Folks, with VA, the better comparison is probably Kilgore/Kaine due to the black turnout in 2008.  Not that it looks any prettier for Dems with that model.

[Sam Spade]

I want to see more of NoVA and the Southeast before making too solid of a call, but my early guess is McDonnell +15.

[Sam Spade]

15/18 Precincts - Buchanan County - McDonnell 64, Deeds 36.  Ouch.

[Sam Spade]

McDonnell somehow jumped to 85% on the SBE's website. lol

Virginia is fast, but they make mistakes.

[Sam Spade]

Somehow, McDonnell got 2 million votes in Loudoun County.

[Sam Spade]

I've been so focused on the House that I haven't looked at the statewide map.

It looks strikingly similar to this one:



Don McEachin's 60-40 loss to Jerry Kilgore for Attorney General in 2001.

I will never question Survey USA again.

SUSA is very good at VA for some reason or another, historically.

[Sam Spade]

Based on the Exit poll:

- party id: Rep: 37 % dem: 33 % I: 30 %

No surprise...

- Obama job approval: 48 %

And not 57 % like wapo poll gave one week ago... it's very similar to the RAS daily track poll.

-full time working woman (28 %): have vote at only 51 % for McDOnnell. Probably the incidence of the thesis...

-16 % black. It's a little more than predicted. And Mc Donnell is weak with them: only 9 % of the vote. I would be curious to see the latino vote but the poll doesn't give this infirmation.

The Rasmussen tracker is not the poll you want to use.  Rather, it's SUSA which nailed this race to a tee.

That being said, as I noted above, I see probably a couple of points swing to Republicans in Virginia against the national mean.

[Sam Spade]

Based on the Exit poll:

- party id: Rep: 37 % dem: 33 % I: 30 %

No surprise...

- Obama job approval: 48 %

And not 57 % like wapo poll gave one week ago... it's very similar to the RAS daily track poll.

-full time working woman (28 %): have vote at only 51 % for McDOnnell. Probably the incidence of the thesis...

-16 % black. It's a little more than predicted. And Mc Donnell is weak with them: only 9 % of the vote. I would be curious to see the latino vote but the poll doesn't give this infirmation.

The Rasmussen tracker is not the poll you want to use.  Rather, it's SUSA which nailed this race to a tee.

That being said, as I noted above, I see probably a couple of points swing to Republicans in Virginia against the national mean.

Another point - PPP would have gotten the same result as SUSA, but their weighting was too Democratic.  Understandable.

[Sam Spade]

Based on the Exit poll:

- party id: Rep: 37 % dem: 33 % I: 30 %

No surprise...

- Obama job approval: 48 %

And not 57 % like wapo poll gave one week ago... it's very similar to the RAS daily track poll.

-full time working woman (28 %): have vote at only 51 % for McDOnnell. Probably the incidence of the thesis...

-16 % black. It's a little more than predicted. And Mc Donnell is weak with them: only 9 % of the vote. I would be curious to see the latino vote but the poll doesn't give this infirmation.

Also worth noting that the reported presidential vote of VA voters yesterday according to that same exit poll was 51-43 McCain. Obviously a lot of Obama voters were not inspired enough by Deeds (imagine that) to come out and vote this year. Anyone assumes those same voters will stay home when Obama is back on the ballot in 2012 does so at their own peril.

Also HIGHLY worth noting is that 1 in 5 McDonnell voters approve of the job Obama is doing, compared to only 1 in 20 Deeds voters who disapprove of the President's job. (The numbers for NJ, FWIW, indicate over 1 in 4 voters who approve of Obama's job performance didn't vote for Corzine.)

One of the most insightful comments I've read on the forum is Spade's note that all 50 governors offices can be considered "open seats" in terms of party competitiveness. Federal races obviously are much, MUCH different in that regard. At the risk of over-extrapolating too much in the other direction of the MSM's common wisdom this morning, I see Owens's upset win in NY-23 as far more indicative of 2010 midterms than 2 governors races (but still admittedly only a tiny glimpse).

Be careful in reading too much into who people "say" they voted for.  If they're unhappy (or embarassed), they often lie, especially to exit pollsters (and most pollsters in general).

FWIW, you've stated my point accurately, but let me caution that I do think governor's races are indicative of something when there are serious downballot effects like we saw in VA.  For example, Republicans, according to my maths, destroyed 6 years of gains in one evening in the House of Delegates.

That does say something to me about what may happen in 2010.  But one of the reasons why I said that I didn't see why Republicans were gleeful is because a swing back to 2002/2004-type numbers (or perhaps worse in Appalachia) in the South and Appalachia is simply not enough to take back the House. 

Now, if these swings started showing up in other suburbs outside this area, there might be something.