I thought perhaps the most interesting factoid on our Virginia poll this week was that while Bob McDonnell was getting 93% of the self identified Jerry Kilgore vote, Creigh Deeds was getting just 76% of the Tim Kaine vote.
Who are those Kaine voters Deeds is missing out on?
-They're disproportionately in Hampton Roads. That's probably a regional pride thing, and it's not going to be easy for Deeds to overcome it with those voters.
-Our poll only included 7 Republicans who said they were going to vote for Deeds this year. But it included 22 Republicans who said they voted for Kaine and now weren't going to pick Deeds. Not sure what to make of that- do they like McDonnell more than Kilgore, do they like Deeds less than Kaine, or do they just think that with their party out of power across the board they'd better support their nominee? Probably a mix of those, but the practical implication is that Deeds is getting basically zero crossover support.
-More than half are moderates- it will be interesting to see if the Deeds campaign is able to effectively use The Thesis to win some of those folks back over.
-And of course 45% of them are independents, and Deeds' struggles with that group are the story of the election right now.
One key thing to note is of the Kaine voters not supporting Deeds 45% say they're voting for McDonnell but 55% are still undecided- you would think he would have the upper hand with those voters and just needs to give them a reason to vote for him- or against McDonnell.
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3 comments:
Bigvinu,
two points, first of all in my opinion party identification mostly tops self-identificated ideology in the influence on your voting decision. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that people who voted for the Democrat last time would wind up voting for the Democrat again this time.
Second, was the 2005 electorate (that elected a Democrat by 6 points) really 15% liberal and 38% conservative (eg more conservative-leaning than both the 2004 electorate and the 2009 PPP likely voter universe, which seems to be pretty conservative, too)?
That surprises me.
Ramus,
Yes, the '05 Election saw huge Moderate margins in Tim Kaine's favor. Survey USA has the Moderate Vote (47%, eclipsing the numbers of conservatives and liberals) 70%-24% in Kaine's favor. 2005 was clearly a time when Moderates impacted the election tremendously.
And, as we can see the 2009 Moderate vote, we can see that Deeds is winning no where near as much as Tim Kaine was. Therefore, one can assume that the more Moderate Kaine voters would most likely be competitive, while the Conservative Kilgore voters would most likely be backing McDonnell.
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