On September 23, the Washington Post released its own poll of the Virginia gubernatorial race. Here is the Post’s story about the poll, which shows Terry McAuliffe at 47%, Ken Cuccinelli at 39%, Rob Sarvis 10%, and wouldn’t vote or no opinion 3%. The story has a link to the poll questions and more results. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
It is bizarre that Sarvis is still being excluded from all gubernatorial debates. Over half the states routinely have debates in which at least some minor party and independent candidates for Governor and U.S. Senator are invited into debates.
That’s odd, a poll with no undecided option. I guess changing it to wouldn’t vote or no opinion is a misguided effort to decrease the undecided percentage and nail down a more precise number.
From Rob Sarvis’ twitter feed, it sounds like he will at least be included in the final debate next month. From Sean Campbell @Periclesisright: Kudos to @WDBJ7 for reaching out to the @RobertSarvisVA campaign to engage in October debates. THAT is how news is reported!
This poll is quite different from the last Roanoke poll that had them at 35-33-8%, with 22% undecided. Maybe the undecided vote is firming up, and McAuliffe is starting to run away with it. But I would want to see at least one other poll to confirm that.
Both of the major-party nominees obviously prefer two-way debates over no debates, or 2, 0. It’s to McAuliffe’s advantage to include Sarvis in the debates, expecting that he would take votes away from Cuccinelli, or 3, 2, 0. Cuccinelli would probably be 2, 0, 3, except that it always looks bad when a candidate refuses to debate. Sarvis, of course, is the usual 3, 0, 2. Game theory.
Has the LWV already done their debate? They should lose their 501c3 privilege if they refuse to admit Sarvis.
They skipped their debate because Cuccinelli declined, and while McAuliffe said he was fine debating Sarvis (1 on 1 or 3 way), the LWV and AARP said Sarvis didn’t meet their 15% polling requirement so they canceled.
@Doug McNeil
Roanoke College polls aren’t regarded very highly. They always end up with a higher % of undecideds than any other poll and are thought to poll proportionately more conservatives than are accurate to the electorate. Also in their last poll they had 5 options: Cuccinelli, McAuliffe, Sarvis, Someone Else, and Undecided, even though Someone Else would have to be a write-in. I highly doubt write-ins will get 2%.