McAuliffe 18%
Moran 18%
Deeds 11%
http://www.publicpolicypolling…
Huge number of undecideds but check out the approvals.
“Moran has the best favorability marks from likely primary voters, with 34% having a positive opinion of him and just 10% viewing him negatively. McAuliffe is the most well known of the candidates, which cuts both ways. He has the second highest favorable rating, 30%, but also has easily the highest unfavorable rating at 23%. Deeds is the least well known of the trio with 67% of respondents having no opinion of him one way or the other.”
Looks like anything could happen here but I guess McAuliffe has the edge with his financial advantage. Does anybody actually think he could win in November? This is a genuine question and not rhetorical.
…that any of these three REALISTICALLY COULD win in November, but I think McAuliffe potentially carries the biggest risk as a guy who has never run for anything in his life.
The only positive precedent for McAuliffe I can think of, and which always comes to my mind right away, is Mark Warner: businessman running for Governor after never being elected to anything. But McAuliffe has bigger weaknesses than Warner in that Warner at least had run for Senate once before just 5 years prior, and no one was calling him a carpetbagger (even though I have no idea if Mark Warner is a native Virginian) as McAuliffe is tagged.
Still, I don’t write off McAuliffe’s abiilty to win. His ad running in southeastern Virginia, which I viewed online, is a good ad, and more like that, and strategically placed as that one was, can get it done.
As Chuck Todd always says, “candidates and campaigns matter.” Maybe McAuliffe will run as poor a campaign as Hillary’s presidential, or maybe he will run as good a campaign as her husband Bill did in the 90s. My only hope is that if he runs a good primary campaign and wins, he better damn well run as strong a general election campaign and not “pull a Ned Lamont” on us.
Sharon Bulova retained the position of head of the Fairfax County Board previously held by Gerry Connally. Bulova’s margin was a scrawny 1,217 votes in a contest the Washington Post said was marked by low turnout and poor weather. Blue Commonwealth, the successor blog to Raising Kaine, had no additional details. It was 50.0% to 48.8% (per Blue Commonwealth).