On the weekend before the Democratic primary in Virginia that will determine that state's nominee for Governor, we received two clear indicators that this is a race that will be decided by the ground game.
The first indicator was the ever changing polls in the race. After a series of polls were released in the race this week, all three candidates are found in a narrow band, with Deeds surging into the lead, but the overall trendlines still within the statistical margin of error:
The other factor which portends the need for the ground game is some early indicators that there will be a low turnout on Tuesday. This is not anything new in the Commonwealth--when Jim Webb won the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate back in 2006, turnout was 3.45% of the electorate. And...no...I did not accidentally misplace the decimal point. Three. Point. Forty-Five.
So, as we wait for the polls to open in 24 hours (and perhaps a final late poll or two), now would be a fine time to speculate on who a low-turnout election benefits.
The problem with such an analysis is this--it is possible to make a reasonable case that ANY of the three leading candidates will benefit from a depressed turnout.
THE CASE FOR TERRY MCAULIFFE
The case for one-time frontrunner Terry McAuliffe is, in some ways, the hardest to make. There are at least a few sources of data that suggests that McAuliffe's strength lie with what we would deem as "casual voters", the kind that would be most likely to stay home in a low-turnout election. From his perch at Pollster, Mark Blumenthal made the following observation from a recent PPP survey:
On their last two polls, PPP provides crosstabulations that compares two groups: (1) households with vote history in either of the very low turnout primaries in 2005 or 2006 with (2) households where voters participated in only the much higher turnout 2008 presidential primary. Both polls show Deeds doing better (by 8-10 points) in the lower turnout households. McAulliffe scored 9 points lower in the low turnout households two weeks ago, but just two points lower earlier this week.
SurveyUSA found another potentially painful data point for McAuliffe: two of McAuliffe's strongest subsets was Independent voters and younger voters, two groups who are less likely to participate in a low turnout election.
So, what is the case that can be made for Terry McAuliffe? As you might expect, a big part of that case is made by money. If this election is going to be based on the ground game, McAuliffe has the resources to put the best team in the streets on Tuesday. As Swing State Project reported late last week, McAuliffe had more cash-on-hand than Moran and Deeds COMBINED. It stands to reason, therefore, that he will be able to afford putting all hands on deck come Tuesday. Lest we forget, his staff is something of a Virginia political all-star team. They have been this way before.
THE CASE FOR CREIGH DEEDS
As with McAuliffe, there are at least a few things in this final push to give Deeds supporters some pause as they head into this potentially low-turnout primary day. For one thing, Deeds had the least amount of money for the critical final push--McAuliffe had $1.3 million on hand, Moran had $700K on hand, and Deeds trailed with $521K on hand. For another, as Markos pointed out last week, the Washington Post reported that Deeds had to juggle his resources recently, laying off some field staff in order to stay on the air. That could be problematic on Tuesday.
On paper, though, the case for Deeds is the easiest to make. As our own polling attests, he is the candidate whose polling is moving in the right direction. This was further confirmed, and decisively so, by the final PPP poll on the race, which gave Deeds a stunning double-digit edge.
The Pollster graph above also dramatically attests to that fact.
Furthermore, the SurveyUSA poll alluded to earlier has a data point that makes Team Deeds smile--Deeds has a pretty solid lead among those whose minds are made up. To put it another way, his share of the electorate seems (and other polls have indicated this as well) to be the most committed.
If the polls are accurate, Deeds has the momentum, and the most committed corps of voters. That may prove to be an awfully formidable combination. The committed voters, in particular could be his ace in the hole, in a low turnout affair.
THE CASE FOR BRIAN MORAN
As Terry McAuliffe's polling numbers have cooled, and Creigh Deeds' have surged, Brian Moran has flown mostly under the radar. He was late to get on the air, not even getting onto television until a couple of weeks ago, according to the Washington Post article linked above. Recent polls have, with a few notable exceptions, placed him in third place.
But there is also a path to victory for Moran on Tuesday, and it runs through NoVa.
The hardest thing to predict in an election, besides general AMOUNT of turnout, is regional STRENGTH of turnout. As Markos pointed out earlier in the week in the discussion of the new DailyKos/Research 2000 poll out of Virginia, turnout out of vote-rich Northern Virginia has been variable in the last two contested primary elections here. In 2005, NoVa comprised around one-third of the primary electorate. In 2006's absurdly low turnout, NoVa's share of the primary vote spiked to 44%.
Now, of course, there is a critical caveat there: the 2006 primary election was between two candidates that were BASED in Northern Virginia (Harris Miller and Jim Webb). Therefore, an exaggerated level of turnout in NoVa would be expected. In this race, as we know, there is a downstate candidate on the ballot (Deeds). So, it is hard to imagine that despite its growth, and despite its consistent movement towards the Democrats, that NoVa will again comprise such a dominant share of the electorate.
If it does, though, Moran could very well be in the catbird seat. He has locked down a huge number of NoVa endorsements, and the area includes the home base for his brother, Congressman Jim Moran. If there is any "turnout machine" in some of the larger cities in the north, it will likely be a Moran machine.
The PPP poll out last night claims Deeds is now at parity with Moran here. That's possible, but given his local support, plus the preponderance of other polling on the race, I'd suspect that Moran will benefit the most from a comparably robust NoVa turnout.
Watch turnout here, specifically, on Tuesday. If NoVa's share of the electorate is in the 20-29% range, that is exceptionally bad news for Moran (and, for what it's worth, great news for Creigh Deeds). If it is in the 30-39% range, watch out for Moran. If it approaches 2006 levels comparable to the rest of the state, Moran could be the "Upset Special" on Election Night.
UPDATE: Per a recent diary by TeacherKen, SurveyUSA released this morning and confirmed PPP's numbers: Deeds 42, McAuliffe 30, Moran 21. It appears that the "anti-McAuliffe" vote has broken almost entirely in one direction.
