If you are in Virginia please GOTV (we will get to some of what has happened in this race in a second). I don’t agree with some of the actions of the activists groups in VA, though I guess I understand them.
First, the state of the race. I include in this chart the track record of the pollsters currently active.
The last three numbers are tied, Gillespie +3, and tied. One of those pollsters, The Polling Company has no track record I can find. Roanoke does, and they aren’t very good — they missed by more than 10 in 2014 and 2013. But they missed by OVERSTATING the Democratic vote. They have no bias one way of the other. The third pollster is Rasmussen, a right wing pollster with a questionable record.
So the last 3 pollsters aren’t great. But Suffolk has Northam up only 4, and the Post has a 5 point lead. Quinnipiac has a 17 point lead for Northam. Quinnipiac was well off though in 2016 in Virginia and in general their polling has been favorable to Democrats since Trump took office.
That does not mean they are wrong.
PollingStill this race should not be close given Clinton’s win in 2016 (where she ran ahead of her national number) and the political environment. The Generic Ballot was actually pretty good at predicting the shift in 3 of the 4 special House races. The only exception was in GA-6, where Ossoff did not improve on Clinton’s number.
This later point may be instructive. One of the biggest swings in 2016 was the shift in upscale voters, where Clinton improved by 9 points on Obama’s performance. It may be that Gillespie is winning back some of the upscale voters that deserted Trump.
2016 versus 2012 exit polls by incomeOf course an off-year election has an electorate quite different than a Presidential electorate. One would expect to see fewer young people and African Americans — both key groups for Democrats. Still I would have expected given Trump’s unpopularity to win this state by a larger margin than Clinton won.
What about early voting? Va requires an excuse to vote early, so early voting is lower than in places like Florida. Here is the data:
xVirginia #earlyvote update: 147,148 voted as of 11/3. Surpassed 2013 non-presidential record of 121,359. One more day of in-person early voting to go, with some mail ballots still outstanding, too pic.twitter.com/ZPG58FUo7K
— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 3, 2017Two points, and they cut in opposite directions. The age makeup of the early voters skews old, and that is not good news for Democrats. But then it USUALLY skews old. Most of the early vote is in NOVA — a Democratic stronghold. There is no evidence that rural turnout — which was behind Trump’s strength in many places is up dramatically.
The last days of this campaign have been dominated by a series of borderline racist ads from Gillespie. It looks to me that Northam believed these attacks were working, and as a result he embraced an attack on sanctuary cities. This was after the removal of the Democratic LT Governor’s picture from Northam’s advertising.
This was too much for the DFA, which withdrew their endorsement.
xBREAKING: After anti-immigrant comment, DFA announces end of “direct aid†for @RalphNortham in #VAGOV race RELEASE: https://t.co/VSL7TiNCV1
— DemocracyForAmerica (@DFAaction) November 2, 2017Our Revolution never endorsed Northam because none of the local chapters requested their endorsement.
None of this is smart. Our Revolution’s excuse is hard to believe, and DFA’s statement that Northam statements were racist aren’t going to help either.
Of course the DFA announcement comes almost at the same time as Brazile released her book, and an excerpt sure to cause controversy. Why the former head of the DNC couldn’t have waited a week is beyond me.
Northam has not run a great campaign — his margin was shrinking before any of the recent events. If you have time please consider knocking on doors or calling.
I would not underestimate the consequences if we lose this race.