Talk Elections

Gillespie - 48%
Northam - 47%
Hyra - 3%
Undecided - 3%


It should be noted, however, that this poll assumes an electorate that is much whiter and much more Republican than the 2014 midterms.
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/920341592074084354


https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_VA_101717/

I'm not about to start unskewing polls but I think Monmouth is making a mistake in assuming 2017 will be more Republican friendly then 2014. Just throw it in the average.

The demographics are remarkably different from even their last poll, but yeah just throw it in the average.

Like any outlier, I'm gonna wait for confirmation before getting too worried.

The demographics and region break down don't make any sense.

Even though it's an outlier, it's pretty embarrassing for Dems that this is even close. If Hillary was president Gillespie would probably be a shoo in.

Why is that? This is Virginia. It was probably always going to be close.

2009 wasn't close. Neither was the 2008 Senate race.

Gillespie is facing massive anti-Trump/anti-GOP headwinds in a lean D Clinton state with 2 Dem senators and a Dem governor. Granted, this is mitigated somewhat by governor's races tending to be less partisan than federal races, but still. It's remarkable that he's still in the game at all considering those headwinds. If Hillary was president it's probably safe to say it would either be a neutral or pro-GOP environment.

I agree with this.

Maybe yes, Maybe no. Virginia has become pretty inelastic, stuck between D+1 and D+6 for all races between 2005-2016, with the exception of the 2008 senate race, which was "Moderate Dem vs. Total Gadfly", and the 2009 gubernatorial election. However, in the long-term nationally, it is probably better strategically for dems that they lost the presidency. With Trump as President, dems have a chance at breaking even in the senate in '18, maybe even a net gain of 1 seat. With Hillary as President, the GOP would have a shot at 60 seats.

Monmouth is an A+ pollster on 538. Great momentum for Ed.

Sigh. This is why I was for Perriello.

Sweet

Junk poll.

I just cant see the Virginia electorate being whiter and more republican than in 2014. I think Monmouth is trying to prevent a repeat of 2014 with Warner but by doing that, they over-corrected. Virginia is getting less white and less republican, not more. I also cant see turnout in Western Virginia matching NoVa. This poll is just so flawed. Its good Monmouth released it, and theres only so much you can do with a bad sample but this is just a bad poll.

They still have a shot at 60 seats now, lol. We really have no idea what the political environment will be like in a year. At least with Hillary we would've gotten a SCOTUS seat and a veto pen. It's pretty strange how, according to common sense and the polls, we're currently in a pro-D political environment that rivals if not eclipses 2006/2008, yet actual election results have not lined up with this reality outside of a couple crimson red seats Dems didn't try in (KS/SC.) It seems like every time Dems actually try in a race, they end up bungling it somehow (GA, MT, and now possibly VA.) Hell, even in NJ the race is defaulting to a generic D vs. generic R margin despite Trump AND Christie's toxicity in the state. Good lord, Dems couldn't even beat a guy who literally assaulted a reporter the day before the election, LOL. I have to laugh at that otherwise I'd cry.

It seems to be a fairly consistent trend that Dems do very well in hypothetical polls of races months/years in advance, then completely fall apart on the actual day of the election or in polls taken close to it. This happened with Hillary, Ossoff, Quist, Feingold, most of our incumbents in 2014, the generic ballot polls in 2013, and the list goes on. And it spans the entire ideological spectrum, so don't give me any of that muh Hillary wing vs. muh Bernie wing crap. Feingold was the Berniebros' hero before most of them even knew Bernie's name, yet he lost by a far bigger margin than Hillary did in Wisconsin in a race he supposedly had in the bag for over a year. Quist was also from the "Bernie wing" and got thumped by an assaulting carpetbagger from New Jersey.

That reminds me, has anyone checked to see whether this guy is Krazen's sock?  I've been meaning to ask about this.

@IceSpear: In case you're not aware, the official excuse for Dems not being able to beat Assaulterforte in MT (I refuse to call him by his real name after his actions), is that most of the vote was cast during early voting.

If Hillary had won, she would've done better downballot taking a few seats away from the GOP.

Compare the downballot performance of 2012 vs 2016, it's very clear that the GOP overperformed in 2016. Part of that can be attributed to Hillary's GOP courtship strategy.

The issue is the sample of this poll are different from their last poll. This poll is 28% dem 30% repub 43% independent. Independents went by 4 to Northam. Their last poll was like 32% dem 25% repub 43% independent and independents went by 4 to Gillepsie.

These demographics are very different from VA as a whole (it was like 37% dem 32% repub in 2013 and 40% dem and 33% repub in 2016).

I could poll only republicans in California and show that the republican is up 88-12 in California but that wouldn't be a good sample.

I could also only poll eastern California and show republicans winning, but again, there's a whole west coast.

So clearly, the only thing this poll says is that independents are still slightly for either Northam or Gillepsie (slight trend towards Northam in a lot of polls, but Gillepsie was up in the early polls), and that this race will come down to turnout.

Depends. If Hillary had just barely eked out narrow wins in MI, WI, PA, she would have won the presidency narrowly, but downballot results probably stay the same.  If she had won by something more like Obama's margin, then yeah, you have a point.

I'm pretty sure most Democrats agree that it had more to do with the fact that Quist by all accounts proved to be a piss-poor candidate despite initially looking solid on paper.

You need to remember though it wasn't just Trump who outperformed the polls, those GOP downballot candidates also outperformed the polls. So, the same phenomenon that helped Trump in the end, also helped them.

We know that Comey made his decision to go public based on a forged russian document.

Go look on the main VA post I have gotten tons of hate because I called the polls with 11 point leads for northam junk
Also getting hate for saying Gillespie is going to win.

I was referring to the excuse for why the assault didn't have much effect, rather than the excuse for why Quist wasn't ahead before the assault.




If we assume that each GOP downballot candidate outperforms or underperforms Trump to the same degree as they did in real life, and adjust the presidential result the 1% that is needed for Hillary to win WI, MI, PA, no senate race flips. (Although Toomey's race becomes perilously close at R+0.43)

Better idea: let's just throw him in the oubliette with Cora and the rest of our recent garbage posters.

All we can do is wait and see.

Why is it that the Dems need stellar candidates to win, but the GOP can nominate and elect Trump, Greg Gianforte, Roy Moore, Roy Blunt, Sam Brownback, Pat Roberts, Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, etc. etc. without repurcussions?

I think Dems need to start accepting that deplorables are unwinnable and Republicans are far more "locked in" than Democrats are. Times have changed drastically since Akin/Mourdock, both of whom were exceptions to begin with. If Democrats routinely nominated candidates as piss poor as that above list we'd be a permanent minority. Even lazy but otherwise harmless milquetoasts like Martha Coakley and Anthony Brown end up losing in the most Democratic states in the country. When Dems imported some rich guy to run in an evenly split upstate NY seat, something Republicans do on the regular with occasional success, he lost by like 57 points, lol. The double standard is real.

Well, at least we finally got a poll showing Gillespie up.

Or how about this? The Comey's announcement caused a uniform 3% swing of voters who were otherwise ready for Hillary/Feingold to win to Trump/Johnson. That's why both Trump & Johnson overperformed the polls.

Look at the polling for Bayh pre-Comey announcement.

LOL I'm not even a troll besides I'm have been in conjunction with NOVA Green working on a project that will not have partisan lean at all I think both republicans and democrats will like what working on.

"Fiscal conservative, social liberal" Northam not good enough for VA?  I thought he'd be a perfect fit. What a disgrace this country is if Gillespie wins this race. I guess muh culture war trumps literally everything else.

Deplorables, per Hillary's comments, are half of Trump's supporters. 46% (Trump's NPV total) * .5 = 23% of the country consists of deplorables. Quit acting like deplorables are 40% or something.

If 3% of voters were solidly in the D camp, and solidly moved to R following Comey's announcement, that would cause a 6% swing in the results.

I happen to think Hillary was being very generous and diplomatic with that comment. ;)

I think that's probably an overestimation of the Comey effect. I could see half of that though, which would be enough to get Kander and McGinty over the top, so there's your Manchin Majority. Of course, it's not as if dems would be able to do much of anything with that sort of majority.

Atlas is once again being biased for a Republican. There are two other polls out that show Northam leading, so this one is the outlier out of recent polling.

I think it's because a majority of us our drama queens.

Well, Roanoke is junk and should be ignored. The other has Northam ahead, but still shows a significant narrowing of the race since their last poll. My posts were mostly referring to how the race was close at all, not how Gillespie was ahead/gonna win. I still think Northam is ahead and the favorite.

Roberts was in hindsight never gonna lose, Gianforte would've lost to a better candidate, Moore hasn't won yet and is being held to single-digits by a weak b-lister in most polls in friggin' Alabama.  The rest of those races would've been won by Democrats had they not taken place in a Republican wave year (or in Trump's case, had we run a remotely competent candidate).

The CNU poll shows movement within the MoE.

Says a left wing democrat

Seriously this is a big deal Gillespie hasn't had a lead in 1 poll since the primary till now.

Polls are never a big deal.

I mean, I still think Northam will edge him, but why the surprise? Gillepsie isn't a trash tier candidate, as we've seen.  If anything he's a very personally strong candidate imo.

Historically that is highly unlikely. Even in a favorable midterm, the party that controls the White House almost always has trouble ousting incumbent opposition party Senators. It's not to say Democrats won't lose some, but 8 would be GOP wave numbers and with Trump in office it's hard to argue even for a neutral year when he is digging their party into a ditch with the electorate.

It's undeniable the Republican Party's strength right now, but that came from a succession of favorable election years under what was an unpopular Democratic president (save for his entry, reelection and leaving office). Republicans aren't invincible, rather I think that 8 years is a long time and that is how long it has been since Republicans had a deeply unpopular president wrapped around their necks.

As it stands now, it's actually pretty remarkable things went downhill for Republicans so fast. It took Republicans a lot longer to start posting consistently comfortable leads in the generic ballot than it did for Democrats in 2017.


To be fair, Georgia's race was not really a friendly district - there are a lot more that are better targets and with electorates more friendly to Democrats. Coming in at around Clinton's numbers could have been the best Ossoff could do at this point, given how fast the district moved towards Democrats already. As for Montana, well even as he assaulted a reporter, most of the vote was already in at that point. Had he done it maybe a week or two prior, we could be having a different discussion. Suffice to say that there is a reason Trump picked incumbents from these districts, and not, say, people like Coffman, Upton or LoBiondo.

Point is, those Congressional races were all in tough, deeply conservative districts, ones Republicans probably wouldn't even expect to lose in a wave. If you look at the performance of Democrats in the oodles of legislative special elections, they have made decent gains and over-performed quite a bit. I think the average of it is +11 or +12 points better than they should, which even surpasses most of the generic ballot leads.

There was a Cook article (link (https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/virginia-house/why-virginias-delegate-races-could-be-most-telling-2017-elections)) recently that went over something I've been saying for a while now, and that is that Virginia's gubernatorial race isn't the one to watch. It's the HoD races. That is where people's default opinions / opinions of the president tend to play out. It's easier for a single Republican candidate to wage an effective campaign for a single high-profile statewide race, but all those smaller races that people are largely in the dark about are where you see a potential wave building. So far Democrats have been posting pretty tall leads in the HoD generic ballot, which could translate to substantial gains. Maybe not enough to flip it, given all the incumbents Republicans have, but enough to use 2019 to build a majority.


I get your pessimism, I think it's warranted in some respects (NJ Democrats should be performing better given the state's leanings, but oh well), but after the Obama years, I find the energy on the left and current special election results (as a whole) rather encouraging

I think Northam will take this, but if Gillespie holds it within 2 points should be a "moral" win for the VA Republicans.

Some SERIOUS denial here... How come the GOP in Virginia seemingly outperform every poll? 2014 Ed vs Mark Warner (most popular politician in the state) was D+9 on election day, yet became D+1 barely. Cuccinelli was down D+7 and barely won by D+2. Polls are skewed, folks.

Every one of y'all casually ignore 2016...

()

The VA governor's race is tightening. If you like him or hate him, Terry McAuliffe is a hardball, brass-knuckles campaigner and politician. That is why he wins. He won in 2013 because of that. Now, McAuliffe looks like he will not have a successor like Kaine and Deeds (2009) and McDonnell and Cuccinelli (2013).

Virginia governors only serve one-terms anyway, but the Virginia Legislature is crucial as well.

The African-American and Latino vote may be unenthusiastic about Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam anyway. Some black voters may be voting for Ed Gillespie as well.

Virginia governors elections change parties. The pendulum swings. I don't think the current American political environment matters anymore unless if it has big impact. Republicans look motivated to vote and suburban Republicans look like they are voting for Gillespie. Even the rural/working class Republican Trump-Stewart voters look like they are for Gillespie, reluctantly. The Republican base looks energized in Virginia.

I wonder how Tom Perriello would have done....

I think Gillespie has successfully found his "car tax" issue – MS-13/sanctuary cities/illegal immigration.

Did Monmouth even poll Virginia last year?

Seems about right, maybe with Northam still slightly ahead.

But yeah, the Udall-esque switch to abortion was not a good fit. Plenty of good opportunities and that's what Northam goes with?

It's true that Northam well overperformed in the primaries and that Gillespie underperformed [or perhaps Stewart over is a better way to put it?] and this could happen again.

But given how the debates were, and Gillespie going all out...I not so sure of that.

Normally that would be true, but the map is so stacked this time that even in a "neutral" year the Republicans would probably gain quite a few seats. Dems are having to defend a lot of deep red territory which could still be very vulnerable even in a Dem wave, and our prospects for gains are limited due to nearly hitting our ceiling in this class after 2012.

I'm glad Dems are crushing it in the generic ballot polls. But if it doesn't translate into actual results, then it's worth nothing. The only thing Hillary's 20+ point leads in the 2013-2015 polls got us was a lesson that early polls are totally worthless.

Is it safe to say that GA-06 is a race the Dems would almost certainly win in any scenario where they flip the House? I'd think so. Close but no cigar isn't gonna cut it, particularly since there's hardly any margin of error due to egregious gerrymandering. I think Republicans have a point about moral victories. I'm sick of them. I want some actual victories. The massive swings in KS/SC from the Trump/Clinton margin cannot be understated, and if replicated across the entire country it would make the 2008 and 2010 waves look like ripples in the kiddy pool. But then when we actually needed only the tiniest swing to win the Georgia district, it failed miserably.

Murphy and Northam matching Clinton's margin in their respective states isn't really going to give me much hope for 2018, much less if one or both of them either fall below Clinton's margin or, god forbid in Northam's case, lose.

You bring up some good points about the legislative and HoD races though. It'll be interesting to see how those turn out.

People kept saying these bland centrists are unelectable. Perriello was the better & stronger candidate.

Please go away, poll truther.

Primaries in Virginia are open -- independents can vote. Given how strongly the Virginia Democrats rejected Perriello, and since that vote was open to independents (if it was closed, then Perriello might be less popular with Dems but more popular than Northam overall), I have doubts about that.

Plus, if Gillespie is making inroads based on MS-13 against Ralph "Eastern Shore native, VMI graduate, Army veteran, and pediatric neurologist" Northam, I can't imagine Perriello responding better.

This is just one poll showing Gillespie in the lead (and then only within the MoE), and you all are going apesh**t over it?  Really?  ::)

If we start seeing a trend within the next few weeks, then we can all get excited (or panicked) about it.  Until then, let's all chill for a bit. 

Good to see someone else is being rational about this :P

It's a neat narrative for out-of-state leftists, but actually the Northam campaign isn't filled with D.C. establishment types like Perriello's was.

I see the someone can't let sh**t go.

Centrists like Tim Kaine and Terry McAuliffe can win, because they attract Independent voters. Creigh Deeds and Ralph Northam probably cannot. However, I think Northam wins by 4 points.

lulz. Check the VA megathread in the gubernatorial board and you'll see Greedo complaining on every page that every single poll that has Gillespie behind is fake because of polling discrepancies from 2014.

being on this board, even if just for a couple months, has shifted my motivations just a little bit, so that I hope Northam wins in (slight) part because the maroon-avatars and certain blue avatars on this site are going to be goddamn insufferable if he loses.

Lol I never said northam can’t win I give Gillespie only a 58_60% chance of winning all I’m saying is
That you can’t be aka Gillespie leading by 1 point then losing by 6 then losing by 7 and losing by 13 points it’s not possible the polls saying Gillespie losing by 13 are garbage just like a poll showing Gillespie leading by 13 would be garbage.

If Gillespie wins, will you promise to start using punctuation and not writing posts as one long run-on sentence?

Can you make the same promise even if Northam wins too, actually?

Yes that’s something I need to work on in general.for school there only two things I’m behind on and that’s math and writing so yes I will get to it after my math class ;)

Wow, people are seriously losing their minds over ONE poll showing Gillespie up by ONE!? First of all, this race was never Safe D. There was always a chance that Gillespie could win. Also, has anyone ever heard of "averages"? Yes, this poll shouldn't be tossed out the window, but if you average it in with the other polls, it's clear that Northam is still the favorite, though he probably won't win by more than mid-single digits.

It's typical Atlas. It regularly bounces between both extremes - "DEMS ARE GOING TO WIN TEXAS!!!!" one day, then "OOP, REPS LEADING IN FLORIDA BY 1%, HERE COMES THE YUGE WAVE" the next, then back again.