It’s early, possibly meaningless, but it’s data. “It” is a Roanoke College poll which shows Mark Warner with a commanding lead over Ed Gillespie in the race for U.S. Senate:
In a very early test of a possible November match-up, Senator Mark Warner leads Republican Ed Gillespie by almost 30 points (50%-21%), but Gillespie is unfamiliar to most Virginians.
The Roanoke College Poll interviewed 633 residents in Virginia between January 13 and January 17 and has a margin of error of +3.9 percent. (The election question was only asked of registered voters-N=553, margin of error = 4.2%)
Considering Gillespie must first win the nomination (and I do believe Shak Hill and Howie Lind will have something to say about that), the result is, well, whatever. But of somewhat more interest are Warner’s favorables:
Not exactly the sort of numbers an incumbent likes to see. Even less so are the right track/wrong track numbers for the country:
Virginians don’t think the nation is doing well. They are more positive about the state (47 percent think it’s on the right track versus 36 percent on the wrong track). National numbers matter in a federal election.
There is plenty of other material in the poll — a fun data point is Terry McAuliffe’s 37 percent approval rating. But then there’s also a question about Medicaid expansion:
An interesting split, that largely follows the prompts in the question. But it would appear that the “hell no” position has work to do. We shall see.
