Virginia Governor's Race 2013 -Who's Gonna Win?

[Skill and Chance]

So at this point is it fair to say that the Democratic candidates have the upper hand in all three races?

Only in the Lt. Governors race.  Governor will be a toss-up until election day, and Attorney General is a toss-up now, but should lean D as the fireworks from the other races spill over.

I would say:

Gov- Tilt D
LG- Likely D
AG- Tilt D

With AG being the best opportunity for an R hold

[Skill and Chance]

But the fact that Cuccinelli got closer than Romney seems relevant.  Romney = worst possible candidate for rural populist voters and the suburbs didn't swing left as much as many though.  It almost makes you wonder if GOP could have flipped OH and VA in 2012 with a SoCon getting supercharged rural turnout.  Santorum was probably too far out in right field to stay near Romney numbers in the suburbs, but what about Huckabee?

[Skill and Chance]

But the fact that Cuccinelli got closer than Romney seems relevant. 

One way of looking at is that McAuliffe's margin over Cuccinelli's was smaller. Another is that Romney got 47.28% of the vote, Cuccinelli got about 45.3% (as of now.) The 2013 electorate should have favored Cuccinelli. While he did better than predicted, really McAuliffe did worse than predicted, and McAuliffe was so much worse of a candidate than Obama...

But you also have the Libertarian , and most of his best counties overlapped with Cuccinelli's support.

[Skill and Chance]

Difficult to conpare Romney vs. Cuccinelli because millions of 2012 voters didn't go to thr polls a week ago.

That's true, but the electorate last Tuesday was only 2% less diverse and 2% less Dem than the Obama 2012 electorate.  And McAuliffe finished... 2% behind Obama!

So the more diverse presidential electorate is a factor.  And G.W. Bush has shown that enough minority voters will give an populist SoCon R a second look.  Although that needle gets harder to thread every year.  It's worth noting, however that the Evangelical numbers are even more unanimous for the GOP now than they were for Bush.  A lot of people suspected Romney would have an Evangelical problem.  Instead, they broke stronger for him than Bush!