UPDATE: Quinnipac just released their latest poll and they have Mcauliffe leading Cuccinelli by six points:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Quinnipiac University's latest findings released Monday found McAuliffe with a six point edge over Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, 46 percent to 40 percent. Libertarian Robert Sarvis claimed the support of eight percent of likely commonwealth voters, according to the poll.
Those results amount to little change from Quinnipiac's findings last week, which showed McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli 45 percent to 41 percent. - TPM, 11/4/13
PPP's final poll on the Virginia Governor's race is making me feel even more optimistic about tomorrow:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
PPP's final Virginia poll finds Democrats leading in all three statewide races. In the Governor's race Terry McAuliffe has the advantage with 50% to 43% for Ken Cuccinelli and 4% for Libertarian Robert Sarvis. In the Lieutenant Governor's race Ralph Northam is headed for a blowout win, getting 52% to 39% for E.W. Jackson. The intrigue will be in the Attorney General contest where Mark Herring is only up 47/45.
McAuliffe is likely to win on Tuesday because voters see him as the lesser of two evils. Both candidates are deeply unpopular with Cuccinelli posting a 39/52 favorability rating, and McAuliffe's coming in at 36/52. But among voters who dislike both candidates- and they account for 15% of the electorate- McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli 61/16. Those voters who don't like either major party standard bearer are responsible for McAuliffe's entire lead in this poll.
Beyond that McAuliffe leads because he has a 47/39 advantage with independents and because he has a more unified party, with 82% of Democrats saying they'll support him to 79% of Republicans for Cuccinelli. Moderate voters prefer McAuliffe 66/24. McAuliffe is keeping it unusually close for a Democrat in Virginia with white voters, trailing only 52/42, and he has the requisite dominant lead with African Americans at 86/11. - PPP, 11/3/13
President Obama visited Virginia yesterday to make sure the base guarantee's McAuliffe's victory on Tuesday:
http://www.politico.com/...
Democrats gambled on Sunday that Virginia voters are angrier with Republicans over the shutdown than at Barack Obama for the botched health care rollout.
The president worked during an afternoon rally in the Washington suburb of Arlington to link the GOP candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli, with the wing of the national party he blames for paralysis.
“You’ve seen an extreme faction of the Republican Party that has shown again and again and again that they’re willing to hijack the entire party and the country and the economy and grind progress to an absolute halt if they don’t get 100 percent of what they want,” Obama told a crowd of 1,600 in a high school gymnasium.
“You cannot afford to have a governor who is thinking the same way,” he added, highlighting how furloughs hurt Virginia more than almost anywhere else. “That’s a practical job. They can’t afford to be an ideologue.” - Politico, 11/3/13
Of course Cuccinelli tried to use Obama's visit to help his electoral chances:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
At the same time, Mr. Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, sought to turn the race into a referendum on the disastrous rollout of the federal health care exchange, mockingly welcoming Mr. Obama to Virginia. “Come on in, Mr. President, we’re happy to see you,” Mr. Cuccinelli told supporters on Saturday. “You just bring everybody’s focus to Obamacare.”
Outside of a high school here where Mr. Obama spoke, a sizable band of protesters waved signs reading “You Lie!” referring to the hundreds of thousands of people whose health insurance is being canceled under the overhaul law, despite Mr. Obama’s pledge that people who liked their plans could keep them.
Strategists for Mr. McAuliffe dismissed Mr. Cuccinelli’s focus as an act of desperation with polls showing him behind. “Like a drowning man, he’s jumped onto this as his lifesaver,” said Geoff Garin, Mr. McAuliffe’s pollster. - New York Times, 11/3/13
Cuccinelli knows he's going to lose tomorrow but he trying to stay calm on the surface:
http://www.politico.com/...
In politics, it is generally not a good omen when a candidate’s supporters argue that he still has a chance of victory — if the opponent’s supporters neglect to vote.
But this was Virginia Republican Party Chairman Pat Mullins’s version of the power of positive thinking in an interview this weekend. The path for star-crossed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, Mullins said, looks like this: “If turnout is in the 30s, the low 30s, we’re gonna win. If it gets higher up in Fairfax [in Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia], say like 40, it’s likely we won’t. I don’t think it’s going to hit 40 anywhere. I’m looking at 32.”
For context, 72 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in last year’s presidential election and 40 percent voted in the most recent governor’s race.
This valiant effort at optimism is the kind of thing a campaign does in the closing hours when it becomes enveloped with an unmistakable stench of impending doom. - Politico, 11/3/13
And Cuccinelli's buddy, Governor Scott Walker (R. WI), tried to talk voters out of voting for McAuliffe because he supports unions:
http://www.politico.com/...
Scott Walker warned Republicans at a rally here Saturday that Democrat Terry McAuliffe will be in the pocket of “big government union bosses” if he wins the Virginia governor’s race.
The Wisconsin governor, a conservative icon for breaking the back of the public-employee unions in his blue state and then beating back their effort to recall him, said Republican Ken Cuccinelli also “knows how to take on the special interests.”
“Do you want someone who is going to side with the big government labor unions,” he said at one of two stops ahead of Tuesday’s off-year election, “or do you want to someone who will stand with the taxpayers of the commonwealth?”
One of the about 100 supporters gathered in a field in this D.C. exurb waved a “Stand with Walker” sign from last year’s recall fight. - Politico, 11/2/13
But Walker and the GOP are just jealous because McAuliffe's an excellent fundraiser:
http://www.newrepublic.com/...
Terry McAuliffe is, as usual, on the vanguard of fundraising trends in the Democratic Party. The unlikely candidate for (and likely winner of) Virginia’s governorship has, according to the New York Times, been showered with an “avalanche of money.” He’s raked in $34.4 million versus the Republican, Ken Cuccinelli’s, $19.7 million.
Some of the money comes from traditional Democratic sources: labor unions (to the tune of $2.5 million) and old Clinton pals like Doug Band and Ron Burkle. But the largest individual sum comes from Sean Parker, a tech billionaire, who donated $500,000 to the campaign.
As Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns detailed in Politico, 2013 has been the year of the liberal billionaires when it comes to fundraising. And Parker’s give is actually small, relatively, since it went officially to the campaign. Big-ticket donors to the Democrats, like their conservative analogues the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, have begun to embrace PAC-giving with a true vengeance. Michael Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg (neither a traditional Democrat, but mostly left-leaning) have each started their own. Bloomberg’s PAC, targeting gun issues, will spend $3 million in Virginia alone by election day, while hedge funder Tom Stayer’s group, NextGen Climate Action, has also been a significant force in the raise on McAuliffe's behalf. - The New Republic, 11/4/13
The election is tomorrow. If you need to find your polling place, you can do so here:
http://terrymcauliffe.com/...
And if you want to help out any of the top Democratic candidates get out the vote, you can do so here:
http://terrymcauliffe.com/
http://www.herringforag.com/
http://www.northamforlg.com/
https://secure.actblue.com/...
