Deeds' Problem

We'll have the new Virginia Gubernatorial poll out in the morning but there is so much to delve into that I'm going to start tonight.

Creigh Deeds is not doing well. But it's not like he's bleeding Obama supporters- in fact the 5% of McCain supporters whose votes he's picking up is actually equal to the 5% of Obama's that McDonnell is picking up.

The problem is all in who's motivated and planning to turn out- McCain supporters are at a considerably higher rate than Obama's, and that means a healthy McDonnell lead.

Last week I was skeptical of SurveyUSA's poll showing an electorate that voted for John McCain 52-43...but we actually found it at a 52-41 McCain advantage.

What does that mean? Let's say that 2 million people vote this fall, a slight uptick from 2005. Using the data from the poll that would mean 1,040,000 McCain voters and 820,000 Obama voters.

Now let's compare that to last fall. McCain received 1,725,005 votes. If 1,040,000 of those turn out this year that's equal to 60% of his voters. Obama received 1,959,532 votes. If 820,000 of those turn out this fall that's equal to 42% of his voters.

So there's basically an 18 point enthusiasm gap for turning out this fall between McCain voters and Obama voters at this point. Deeds probably needs to bring that down to about five by bringing out 55% of Obama's voters to win. The bad news is he's not there right now, the good news is he's got three months to get there.

Expect the numbers around 11 AM.