A couple of new polls came out for Virginia over the last two weeks. I would have commented sooner had not the Stomach Bug Monster decided to pay a visit. Fortunately it wasn't the Flu, but it did keep me from posting for close to the last week.
So, we have three polls to cover this time: SUSA, Rasmussen, and PPP. Each roughly agrees with their late July/early August poll; that said, two of the polls showed a slight tightening in the race over the last round. The third is Rasmussen, who is subject to the usual caveats on their modeling problems. However, even ignoring Rasmussen, I must contend that the race has essentially not moved since summer.
The polls (current vs. mid-summer, McDonnell-Deeds):
SUSA: 54-42 vs. 55-40 (July)
Rasmussen: 51-42 vs. 49-41 (August)
PPP: 49-42 vs. 51-37 (July/August)
Since I can't evaluate Rasmussen's poll (no access to crosstabs), I will dispense with that poll for now.
SUSA's swing (McDonnell +15 to McDonnell +12) is almost entirely found in the McCain-Obama voter differences between the two polls. The July poll yielded 52-43; this yielded 51-44.
PPP shows the biggest tightening; however, I spent an earlier entry noting the problem with PPP's summer poll. This is also largely due to changes in the McCain-Obama voter mix. The summer poll had 52-41 McCain, if you'll recall. This one had 49-45 McCain. This was equal to the swing between the old poll (McDonnell +14 to McDonnell +7).
I'll save everyone a long list of breakdowns and just offer you a variation of what I said this summer. Then I said that McDonnell's leads were mostly due to how the samples were mixed. I stand by that remark now; the race hasn't moved much, if any. The differences from the summer are all down to differences in sampling, not any meaningful shift in the electorate.
A good note: All of these polls came out before McDonnell stepped in his thesis. That will probably cause some shifts in the polls (and not in McDonnell's favor, one would hope), but the effects of that have yet to be seen.
Moving down the ballot, the same generally holds in the Lt. Governor's race as holds for the Governor's race: Bolling is moving roughly in tandem with McDonnell.
By sharp contrast, the AG's race has (to all appearances) opened up slightly in favor of Cuccinelli slightly vis-a-vis the Governor's race. The most obvious explanation for that is the unforced error that occurred when Shannon attacked Cuccinelli's call for a special session. When Kaine called the special session, Shannon ended up looking somewhat opportunistic (and possibly somewhat bumbling), and thus even with the shift in the sample, Shannon has made no gains.