The week’s fourth poll of the statewide elections, this one from Quinnipiac, has been released and the numbers are, yet again, dismal for Ken Cuccinelli:
[Ken Cuccinelli] trails Democrat Terry McAuliffe 47 – 39 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis has 8 percent.
This compares to the results of a September 18 survey…showing McAuliffe at 44 percent, with 41 percent for Cuccinelli and 7 percent for Sarvis.
In today’s survey, McAuliffe leads 95 – 3 percent among Democrats, while Cuccinelli leads 83 – 7 among Republicans, with 7 percent for Sarvis. Independent voters go 40 percent for McAuliffe, 38 percent for Cuccinelli and 13 percent for Sarvis.
So Quinnipiac shows Cuccinelli losing ground as McAuliffe, and to a much lesser extent, Sarvis, gains it.
Cuccinelli is bleeding GOP voters and, so far, his campaign has yet to get them back into the fold. There is marginal hope to be found among Sarvis voters. A third of them say there is a “good chance” they will change their minds before election day.
And with Sarvis pulling only eight percent support overall in this poll, it appears as though his chances of being invited to participate on the final gubernatorial debate are hobbling. He needs to reach 10 percent average support to be included.
Whatever effect yesterday’s “major announcement” from the Cuccinelli campaign (which was an attempt to reclaim those disaffected Republicans) may have had is not reflected in this poll.
It’s a good message. But made less than a month out from the election? It’s noise.
At some point, the powers that be in Republican circles will have to decide what they want to do with their resources and the Cuccinelli campaign. As Shaun noted earlier, Cuccinelli’s internal polls are rumored to show him within three points of McAuliffe. If those numbers are correct, then the race really is much closer, and more volatile, than the outside polls have indicated.
We have no way of knowing, because those numbers have not been released.
There are other indications that even the McAuliffe camp may not be sure of its footing. If they were blowing Cuccinelli out of the water, they would have ample time and resources to turn on the rest of the GOP ticket. McAuliffe’s first target would, logically, be E.W. Jackson, followed by Mark Obenshain. But we have not seen such an effort yet. If we do, it will be this contest’s definitive tell.
Again, if the Cuccinelli internals are right, then it would make sense for the GOP to throw everything (else) it’s got into this race. With high negatives on both sides, and weakness in the Libertarian’s numbers, it could still be anyone’s race.
The other side of the argument is that Cuccinelli’s internals are bunk (which is why they have not been released) and the headline numbers from the independent polls are reflecting reality. Cuccinelli is done and the remaining question is how wide-spread the damage will be.
If that is the case, then the cold-blooded approach to the campaign’s final weeks is to put the available resources into building a firewall around the GOP’s strongest statewide effort: Mark Obenshain. Save him, and the GOP avoids the ignominy of having not a single representative among the statewide offices (for the first time in over 40 years). And what of Jackson? The even more cold-blooded response is to put time, money and effort into winning Ralph Northam’s Senate seat. The GOP would then have an outright Senate majority.
Either scenario means Republicans will have to make very hard choices very soon…because they are fast running out of opportunities, and tomorrows.
