More on Virginia

I am excited for our first Virginia Democratic primary poll, which we'll conduct over the weekend and probably release on Tuesday.

One thing that we're going to do is break down the results by whether respondents are natives of Virginia or not. I'm very interested to see if attitudes toward Terry McAuliffe differ significantly along those lines. It would not be surprising to find that his fellow transplants are much more open to his candidacy than natives of the state. When we broke down a poll this way last August we found that 49% of Virginia Democrats were not born in the state, so it is certainly a significant constituency.

We'll also be interested to see if McAuliffe's early television push in the Hampton Roads area is paying any dividends. It's a logical place to start his advertising campaign since neither he, Creigh Deeds, or Brian Moran has a natural base there. It didn't take long for the media campaigns to start making a big difference in the Democratic primary for Governor of North Carolina last year, even at a similarly early stage in the campaign. If McAuliffe is already seeing his numbers rise there it could be an indication that his spending ability may make it tough for his opponents to compete.

Should be interesting!