Virginia 2009 Megathread

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It's all within the margin of error. How fun! I love divisive primaries!

The only divisive result would be McAuliffe winning. He has high unfavorable ratings from Democrats, which could lead to a significant number of Democrats sitting out the election. Moran probably can't win anyway, he's not the right statewide candidate for Virginia.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It's obvious, ain't it?  Terry has hella national connections and Schweitzer is ambitious.  Terry's backing could jumpstart a presidential campaign from a nobody to a second-tier candidate overnight

But he is also the DGA chair. And losing a swing state governorship under his watch isn't going to exactly endear him among the Democratic establishment. Especially now that Obama controls it, not the Clintons.

wasnt Schweitzer a obama supporter in the primaries anyways? i think his endorsing terry probably has alot to do with terry promising to raise alot of money for governors or something like that.

Schweitzer endorsed Obama in June, at which point Obama's nomination was all but assured, so he was not an enthusiastic Obama supporter.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Hi, can you please keep your pissing contest out of my Virginia thread please?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Deeds signs are going up all over Arlington.  He's got huge momentum, and I think he will do much better in NOVA than I had previously thought.

Good to hear. I've seen zero Deeds signs in Hampton Roads and a whopping three Moran signs. McAuliffe has a bunch of signs in Chesapeake and I've seen some in Suffolk, Hampton, and Virginia Beach as well.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Here's why I think that Deeds won't win, and someone who thinks he's going to win can disagree with me if they want. Deeds' entire strategy, and indeed probably the reason he's surged so much, has been putting money into a lot of TV ad buys, to the point that he's laid off staffers. This (along with the WaPo endorsement maybe) have caused his numbers to surge in the past few weeks. However, I have a hard time believing that this new support is not soft; I would guess that they're largely Democrats who've seen Deeds on TV and liked what he's saying. But these aren't the people that are going to turn out in a primary with literally less than 10% turnout by themselves. And Deeds now lacks the staff to get these people out to vote. It's also pretty much impossible to ID these people who have switched to Deeds within the last week or two purely based on ads, so he couldn't GOTV them even if he wanted to.

The thing is, Deeds is leading among the die-hard primary voters (people who voted in the 05, 06, or 07 primaries), who are going to go and vote without prompting by any of the candidates. Besides, if turnout is above, say, 5%, McAuliffe will almost certainly win, because that means he'll have gotten the 08 primary voters to come out.

Also, it's not as if Deeds has laid off his entire staff. It's not like you need a huge number of people to turn out an extra few thousand voters.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Moran's problem is that he's concentrating solely on winning in Northern Virginia. That's been his strategy all along, since in a two-man race with a guy from the middle of nowhere, it's a good way to win, but with McAuliffe splitting the NoVa vote, not so much. You're right that Moran was flustered by McAuliffe's entry in the race -- it seems like he's never been able to figure out how to run a three-way race, since he was expecting to have the nomination handed to him, so he just went negative, negative, negative.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I'm a crossposting fool today, here's my rundown of the House of Delegates elections which will be competitive in November posted on Swing State Project:

http://swingstateproject.com/diary/5071/virginia-house-of-delegates-targets-preprimary-edition

[JohnnyLongtorso]

"Absentee voting applications indicate a low turnout for primary elections Tuesday, the secretary of the state Board of Election said today.

Nancy Rodrigues said 11,549 absentee applications were sent to Democratic primary voters and 5,331 were received. A total of 1,024 were sent to Republican primary voters and 273 were received."

Compared with previous primaries: 2006 had 4,721 absentee voters, and 2005 had 4,525. Doesn't sound like Terry's turnout is going to happen. My guess is turnout will be around 170,000 - 180,000.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Deeds 38
McAullife 33
Moran 29

Subject to change.

I'll probably start up a ''final predictions'' thread on Monday if nobody else does.

I was planning on putting up all my final predictions on Monday, but I want to wait for the last PPP poll to be released, so it would probably be Monday evening for me.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Polls close at 7 or 8?

Polls close at 7 Eastern.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I just looked up Delegate Bob Purkey's campaign website, and I think I have possibly found the worst campaign site ever:

http://www.bobpurkey.net/

[JohnnyLongtorso]

PPP's blog says their final poll will be out tonight between 10 and 11 PM. Interesting.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Any word on the numbers?

PPP's blog says all the undecideds are breaking for one candidate, and the only contest is for second place. There's a person on Blue Commonwealth claiming insider information that it will show Deeds up by 10.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Low enough turnout and Creigh might have an outside chance of winning this thing.

  Creigh Deeds winning the primary will be one of the proudest moments in my recent memory.

When's the primary again?

Creigh Deeds will be nominated on June 9.

Anyway,

Well, when multiple people who are rooting for the same guy as you are finding it coming off way too heavy, it's a good sign to cut back.  I'm not the only person to reference you to Winfield lately.  It's not really working with numbers to go "omg that poll shows Terry winning churchgoers it's WRONG!!"


Anyway, where is Deed's momentum coming from?  NoVa undecideds?

Looking at the area code crosstabs from the last two PPP polls, his support increased most significantly in the NoVa 703 area code (11% to 23%) and in the Southside 434 area code (30% to 43%). He increased by smaller margins in the extreme tip of SWVA 276 (15% to 22%), Shenandoah/NoVa exurbs 540 (31% to 35%) and Hampton Roads 757 (19% to 25%). He actually lost support in the Richmond-area 804 (24% to 21%). Some of his support looks to have been leeched from McAuliffe, especially in the 434, but it could also be undecideds moving around.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Damn. Just... damn.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The Lt. Governor polling is kind of funny:

Jody Wagner - 41
Mike Signer - 12
Jon Bowerbank - 6

Bowerbank still gets 6 percent despite being out of the race for nearly a month.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Desperate last-minute slime from Terry and his blogger pals:

http://virginiademocrat.blogspot.com/2009/06/brief-personal-comment-on-attack.html

Whatever happened to "negative attacks won't create JOBS!!!!!111", Terry?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It's been storming here in hampton roads since about 3. Not good for terry, he needs the african-american vote (of which there is plenty in the area) to win.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It means there hasn't been a primary since 1977. There has either been an unopposed candidate or a nominating convention.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Results thread is yonder:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=97207.0

[JohnnyLongtorso]

With the filing deadline having passed yesterday, it appears as if there will be no third-party candidates on the ballot for any of the three statewide offices.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Post-primary bounce it may be, but I was not expecting it to be quite this big. I was expecting it to turn into a tie.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Post-primary bounce it may be, but I was not expecting it to be quite this big. I was expecting it to turn into a tie.

It was basically a tie before the primary; why wouldn't it turn into a Deeds lead post-primary?

Rasmussen had Deeds down 45-30 in April.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

His McLaw degree from Regent University is a strike against him.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Kaine won by a similar margin to Obama.

Here are the downticket races. Lt Governor:

Bill Bolling (R) - 46
Jody Wagner (D) - 40

Attorney General:

Ken Cuccinelli (R) - 45
Steve Shannon (D) - 38

I'm surprised Bolling is doing that poorly. I was expecting him to start out with a double-digit lead, as he has more money, he's an incumbent, and he's been producing free advertising with his "Lt. Governor's challenge" ads.

Also, I want to barf at the idea of Cuccinelli winning statewide. The only upside would be picking up his State Senate seat.