Former Fifth District Democratic independent Republican Congressman Virgil Goode was recently nominated as the Constitution Party’s candidate for President.
Goode, who lost his congressional seat narrowly in 2008 to Democrat Tom Perriello, who in turn served just one term before yielding to Robert Hurt (R-Chatham), is already on the ballot in 15 states. In 2008, the Constitution Party was on the ballot in 37 states, although in Virginia its candidate held the ballot line of the Independent Green party. That year, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin got 7,474 votes, or 0.20 percent, in Virginia.
What are Goode’s chances to do better than Baldwin in 2012?
Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a survey of Virginia voters on May 1 that shows that, if the election were held today, Goode would receive 5 percent of the vote, with Barack Obama getting 50 percent and Mitt Romney getting 38 percent. (Seven percent are undecided.)
Goode is also viewed favorably by 15 percent of voters and unfavorably by 23 percent. (Sixty-two percent are “not sure” about him; in other words, they have no idea who he is.)
By way of comparison, the far better known Ron Paul (Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate) is viewed favorably by 29 percent of those surveyed and unfavorably by 52 percent — and only 17 percent have no opinion.
In a one-on-one match-up of Obama and Ron Paul, Paul would get 39 percent of the vote to 50 percent for Obama. In a similar match-up with Newt Gingrich, Obama increases his percentage to 53 while Gingrich gets 37 percent. Head-to-head, PPP has Romney at 43 percent with Obama at 51 percent.
PPP comments on adding Goode to the mix:
Another interesting angle in Virginia is the candidacy of former Congressman Virgil Goode as the Constitution Party candidate for President. We find him polling at 5% in a three way contest with Obama’s lead over Romney expanding to 12 points at 50-38. It seems unlikely Goode would ultimately get 5% but anything he gets could help flip the state to Obama given how small Romney’s margin for error there is. Goode gets 10% from those describing themselves as ‘very conservative,’ suggesting that Romney does still have some work to do with the far right.
All these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt. Public Policy Polling has a reputation of being a Democratic-leaning survey organization, and indeed, in this poll, Democratic respondents outnumbered Republicans 39 percent to 32 percent, with “independent/other” at 29 percent. Women outnumbered men 53 percent to 47 percent. Forty-three percent voted for John McCain in 2008 (the actual result was 46.33 percent) and 47 percent voted for Barack Obama (actual result: 52.62 percent).
In any case, Goode and other third-party and independent candidates still have to qualify for the Virginia ballot, which means collecting a minimum of 10,000 signatures statewide and 400 in each congressional district. The filing deadline is August 24 at noon, and in a setback for independent presidential candidates, both the Green and Libertarian parties have had to restart their petitioning processes because of unforeseen, last-minute gubernatorial amendments to an emergency ballot-access law passed by the General Assembly.
