New polls show Mitt Romney and George Allen leading in Virginia (UPDATED: Kaine’s indy collapse)
A new Roanoke College poll gives Mitt Romney and George Allen each 5 point leads in their respective races for President and Senate. Romney is up 49-44 and Allen is up 47-42. The R/D/I split was 31/35/30 so even with +4 for the Democrats, Obama and Tim Kaine are struggling. Heck, if you believe Roanoke’s previous poll, this is a 15 point swing in Allen’s favor!
Gravis Polls found similar numbers for Romney and Allen in a poll released on Saturday. With an R/D/I split of 33/41/26, Romney and Obama were tied while George Allen led by 2, 48-46. +8 Democratic turnout would outpace the difference in 2008, something no one expects, so this race isn’t as close as Gravis would seem.
Which brings us to the NYT/CBS/Quinnipiac outlier. This poll has consistently shown numbers way outside of every other poll so when it shows Romney down by 2 and Allen trailing by four while the R/D/I split 27/35/35, well, if you’re a Democrat you better be worried.
Any turnout short of 2008′s numbers won’t give Democrats a +8 advantage in turnout. And when every poll shows Romney and Allen winning independent voters by a large margin, well, things are looking pretty good for turning Virginia red again!
9:54am UPDATE: Politico dug up this gem from the NYT/CBS/QUINN numbers:
Among independent voters in the most recent poll, Allen was ahead of Kaine, 56 to 38 percent, according to Quinnipiac. In contrast, the poll earlier this month showed independents supporting Kaine over Allen, 51 to 42 percent.
That is a TWENTY SEVEN POINT SHIFT among independent voters, from down 9 to up 18!
10:00am UPDATE: And all of this is hot on the tail of the Washington Post trying to purposefully mislead the public on the state of the Virginia U.S. Senate race:
The reason why Tim Kaine has an 8-point lead is because the Washington Post poll has an 8-point Democrat advantage by party affiliation. In their poll, 31% are Democrats, 23% Republicans and 36% Independents. This 8-point Democrat advantage on party affiliation is even larger than the historic turnout in 2008, which gave the Democrats a 6-point edge in Virginia according to the exit polls. The Republicans had a 4-point party affiliation advantage in 2004 and 2009. The average party affiliation has Republicans and Democrats tied in Virginia at 46%. Not only does the Washington Post poll have an 8-point Democrat advantage, it also only has Republicans at 23% of the electorate, which is 10 to 16 points lower than recent election turnouts.
10 Responses to “New polls show Mitt Romney and George Allen leading in Virginia (UPDATED: Kaine’s indy collapse)”
Wow. One thing that is clear on all these polls, regardless of slant, regardless of sample, is that independents are breaking heavily towards the GOP this year. That is very telling.
Roanoke College has a history of being very accurate, actually going back to 1994 when they were the first public poll to pick up Chuck Robb’s late momentum over Ollie North (meaning they cannot be accused of having a partisan bias, in fact, less than a month ago, they were showing Obama and Kaine ahead I believe 7 and 10 points, respectively). Quinnipiac also released a poll today showing Obama up 2 and Kaine up 4 in Virginia. We’ll find out in a week who is closer to accurate, but I suspect I know which one will get far more attention in the press.
Amazing that the press doesn’t look at polling organizations’ track records. Roanoke has a long history of being accurate. Quinnipiac has a long history of getting it wrong going back nearly 20 years. (Mario Cuomo +5 over George Pataki the day before Election Day 1994 was my first brush with them.)
I am wondering how Romney wins, even winning Va. and Florida. Real Clear Politics has Obama well ahead in Ohio, Mich., Nev., Pa. and Iowa. Ohio seems like the tipping point, doesn’t it? What think?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/?state=nwa
Obama doesn’t clear 50 in most OH polls and he’s below 49 in the state average. His biggest lead is +5 in the Quinnipiac / CBS / NY Times poll, which, if you’ve followed us here, you’ll know Quinnipiac has a horrendous track record of getting things spectacularly wrong spanning nearly 2 decades. Let’s put it this way — Quinnipiac is a college, not a very good one at that, and its students who do the polling work aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs on the academic Christmas tree.
fcs, i get 10 calls a day for romney and allen……koch bros must be digging deep…
Not as deep as the Obama people who have been calling Scott Lingamfelter’s residence asking if his kids would like to volunteer for Obama. You’d think he’d have his team well in place by now and not still trolling for volunteers.
True, but I thought RCP was averaging state polls, not just Quinnipiac. And what is the significance of being over 50? Doesn’t he just need to win a state?
Correct, but a +5 by Quinnipiac throws off the average since even outliers are included and that is by and far the largest margin going either way. If Obama (or any incumbent) isn’t over 50 and it is basically a 2-man race, that is perilous territory since undecideds typically break 3-1 against the incumbent. The other thing to keep in mind is early voting — apparently Dems are getting all their regular voters to vote early while the GOP is getting infrequent voters to vote early so they can depend on their regular voters on Election Day.
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