VA LG Numbers

I never posted our Virginia Lieutenant Governor numbers on the blog this week. Here they are:

Jody Wagner 9
Pat Edmonson 6
Michael Signer 5
Rich Savage 4
Jon Bowerbank 3

I've seen some efforts around the blogosphere to read too much into these numbers. Don't. Any time there's 70% plus undecideds in a race polls don't tell you much of anything other than that...there are a lot of undecideds.

Here's a matter of comparison. Last February we polled the NC Lieutenant Governor primary at a similar distance out from the election as Virginia is right now. We found Pat Smathers at 11%, Dan Besse at 10%, Walter Dalton at 9%, and Hampton Dellinger at 6%. The results ended up being Dalton with 46%, Dellinger with 34%, Smathers with 14%, and Besse with 7%.

What happened? Well two of the candidates had the money to broadly define themselves to the electorate in the month leading up to the election and the other two didn't. The best indication of where the LG primary in Virginia stands right now is probably the cash on hand rather than this poll- the latter won't move too much until the former starts getting spent on mass media. That measure is probably the best indicator at this point of who the true contenders are and who the also rans will be.