One thing I find interesting looking back over our last four polls is that the percentage of likely voters who are Democrats has fallen every time. This is the first race we've polled regularly in the last few years where I've noticed this happening- this is also the first race we've polled regularly in the last few years that's so lopsided. Does anyone know if it's normal for supporters of a particular candidate to finally just decide they're not going to vote if they think he's going to lose? The more inevitable Deeds' loss has seemed the fewer Democrats we've found planning to vote. Here's the data:
| Date | Democratic % of Electorate |
| 9/1 | 38 |
| 9/29 | 37 |
| 10/20 | 33 |
| 10/27 | 31 |
It probably doesn't make much difference to Deeds' prospects at this point whether these people show up, other than the final margin, but it certainly could have bad implications in closely contested House of Delegates races.
We'll have this out sometime tomorrow, probably early afternoon.
I was one of the University of Michigan students who went to Virginia to canvass for Deeds last weekend. We were canvassing mostly for voters who had been identified as strong/leaning Democrats, for GOTV on election day. Of the people who were home and voting, I would guess they split roughly 60% Deeds, 20% undecided, 20% McConnell.
ReplyDeletePeople who actually said that they wouldn't be voting were very rare (I'm guessing ~1-3% of the respondents), but given social stigma against it, that's almost certainly an undercount. But in my opinion, the decreasing number of Democrats is more that people are disenchanted with the party and don't identify with it anymore.