Three weeks from Election Day, another poll shows Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe hanging onto a lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli, while the third-party candidate pulls double-digit support.
Buoyed by strong support among women, McAuliffe leads 46 percent to 39 percent among likely voters in a poll released Tuesday by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.
Libertarian candidate Robert C. Sarvis received support from 11 percent of the likely voters, and 4 percent of voters remained undecided.
“If the Sarvis numbers hold through Election Day, Virginia could elect its first governor with less than 50 percent of the vote in nearly 50 years, since Mills E. Godwin Jr. won 48 percent of the vote in a three-way race in the election of 1965,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center.
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In the contest for lieutenant governor, Sen. Ralph S. Northam, D-Norfolk, leads his Republican opponent E.W. Jackson 51 percent to 39 percent.
The rivals for attorney general are locked in the tightest statewide race. Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, has 46 percent of the vote to 45 percent for his opponent, Sen. Mark Herring, D-Loudoun. That’s a slight change from the Oct. 8 poll that had Herring leading Obenshain by 3 percentage points, but still within the margin of error.
“The attorney general’s race could very well be the one we wait up late for on November 5,” Kidd says in his analysis.
As the contest winds down, appearances will likely pick up. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will formally endorse McAuliffe on Saturday in Falls Church. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will campaign with Cuccinelli on Wednesday in Ashland and Charlottesville.
On Tuesday, the Duggar family talked to a group gathered inside the General Assembly Building in Richmond about their support for Cuccinelli and Jackson.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who star in a reality TV show with their 19 children, were joined Tuesday by several of their children, including Josh Duggar, who is executive director of FRC Action, and one of his sons. FRC Action is the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council.
“Ken Cuccinelli is a statesman,” Jim Bob Duggar said after the event, adding that Cuccinelli has “a backbone of steel and a heart of gold.”
Teresa and BJ Lafferty traveled from Jetersville with their 14 children to see the Duggars.
“They’ve been such an inspiration,” Teresa Lafferty said while standing in the hallway waiting for a picture with the Duggars.
While the CNU poll shows McAuliffe ahead among women voters by 14 percentage points (51 percent to 37 percent), he has seen his support slide among independents from an Oct. 8 poll. His lead among independents dropped from 16 percent to 6 percent in Tuesday’s poll.
The major-party candidates are tied among male voters, at 41 percent.
The politics around the federal government shutdown have been infused into the governor’s race, and Kidd says they have weighed more negatively on Cuccinelli's campaign than on McAuliffe’s.
The Wason Center polled 944 registered voters — 753 of those likely voters — Oct. 8-13. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points overall and 3.6 percentage points among likely voters.
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