Don't quote me on this but....the VA-GOV race will be close.

[brooklynite]

Link to tweet

[helpisontheway]

1. Another poll showing Youngkin leading..😞nt

[Lawrence454]

2. This is an internal Repub poll

And with low sample voters, you can throw this poll in the garbage.

[littlemissmartypants]

4. Excellent point! Most, if not all polls, notwithstanding origin, belong in the round file. And...

Welcome to DU!



❤pants

[womanofthehills]

10. Monmouth poll has them both at 46%

And 538 has McAuliffe down one.

[PortTack]

3. This is CA recall all over again. Voter turn out is higher than '17! It isn't going to be close

[Drunken Irishman]

5. This is nothing like the California recall...unless we were a month out, not mere days.

The recall polls got dangerously close in the weeks leading up to the election, with 'Yes Remove' leading according to RCP from Aug. 3rd to Aug. 29th. However, after the 29th, it broke heavily for 'No', as by Sept. 4th, No led by an average of 9 points and the day before the election (Sept. 14th), No held an average lead of almost 15 points over 'Yes'.

It was clear in the final few weeks of the race that 'No' had significant momentum, which led to the romp we saw.

There is no evidence of this transpiring in Virginia. If anything, it's going the opposite way. So, I disagree. It's nothing like the California recall. The days leading up to that election showed Newsom was likely to remain - right now I think Youngkin just may turn out to be the favorite, barely, at this point.

Of course, it can change but the last poll that had McAuliffe leading was last Sunday, and barely - as he led by just one-point. In fact, the only other polls that don't show McAuliffe leading by just one, or the race tied, are a FOX News poll that has Youngkin up eight and a VCU poll that has McAuliffe up three. Only problem is that VCU poll is a week old today, so, pretty worthless.

[PortTack]

6. I was referring to the fact that in the end this will not be a close race..just like it wasn't in CA

Voting is higher than in ‘17.

The poll that drug the whole thing down released approx 10 days ago was from trafalgor

[Drunken Irishman]

11. There's multiple polls since that show the race either essentially tied or with Youngkin leading.

Well one poll has him leading by a sizable margin (8 from FOX News). Regardless, the polls are not pointing to a race that isn't close.

I still think McAuliffe can out-perform the polls, as Northam did in 2017, but it's also important to point out that Northam led in almost every final poll - with two, Rasmussen and a Roanoke College poll, showing the race tied. His lead was as high as 9 (Quinnipiac) and as low as 1 - but FOX News had him up five, Christopher Newport University had him up 6 and Gravis had him up 6.

Right now, McAuliffe's largest lead according to any recent poll is ... 3 points from VCU, a poll that's already a week old. USA Today/Suffolk has him up 1, Christopher News has him up 1, Emerson has the race tied and FOX News has him down 8. Completely different numbers than 2017.

I suspect this race is going to be closer than what it was in 2017, when Northam won by 8+ points.

[PortTack]

13. The polls at this point have shown to be totally unreliable..the last 3 election cycles were awful

Link to tweet

?s=21

[Drunken Irishman]

15. The polls have predicted the winner each and every time.

The polls had Northam winning, and he won. Yes, the margin was off - but they still predicted a victory and again, not one of the final polls during the last week of that election had Northam losing:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2017/governor/va/virginia_governor_gillespie_vs_northam-6197.html

In 2013, the polls again had the Democrats winning - tho, the margins actually were against the Democrats, as McAuliffe performed over four-points worse than the final average of the polls:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2013/governor/va/virginia_governor_cuccinelli_vs_mcauliffe_vs_sarvis-4111.html

In 2009, the polls pointed to McDonnell winning by 13% - and he won by nearly 18%.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2009/governor/va/virginia_governor_mcdonnell_vs_deeds-1055.html

In 2005, the final margin had Kaine winning by three and he won by about six:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/Congressional/VA_Gov_05.html

So, no, the polls have not shown to be totally unreliable. Right now, I don't think anyone is expecting McAuliffe to win comfortably.

[PortTack]

17. the last 3 election cycles 16, 18, 20 no..they were not even close!

Clinton to win- 538 prediction something like 94%
‘18 completely missed the blue wave of congress, missed the congressional dem losses of ‘20.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/pollsters-2020-polls-all-wrong-500050

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2021/03/02/what-2020s-election-poll-errors-tell-us-about-the-accuracy-of-issue-polling/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/07/19/2020-election-polls-were-the-least-accurate-in-decades-mostly-for-underestimating-trump-report-finds/?sh=2dd046cf6318

The polls including 538 prove inaccurate due to lack of change in their methodology that hasn’t kept up with changing demographics.

[Drunken Irishman]

18. Clinton won Virginia as polls predicted her to do.

So, you're wrong.

[Lawrence454]

8. It's not like CA but the polls were off on that election

Newsom was only suppose to win the no vote by 16 points, his final vote tally was 24 points so an 8 point error in polls. So they are really not reliable that tells us about the race, they are just there to create narratives not realty and I suspect when the results come in a lot media types are going to shock they were wrong. These polls do a lot of herding to make it a much closer race than the real number on Election Day.

[Drunken Irishman]

12. There's also a lot more Democrats in California than Virginia...

Which allows for those margins to shift eight-points with ease. Remember, Biden carried the state by 29 points over Trump last year. When you're looking at margins like that, where there's a near-30% gap in the electorate between the Democrat and the Republican, it's way easier to out-perform the polls than in a place like Virginia.

One concern is that Biden actually under-performed his polling in Virginia last year. The final October polls had Biden leading Trump by an average of 52.6-40.4, or an average margin of 12.2 points. Biden won the state 54-44.6, a difference of almost two-points.

NOT A LOT mind you but right now if McAuliffe underperforms there like Biden did, by just two-points, he loses.

Also important to point out that in 2013, McAuliffe's average lead in the polls on election day was 6.7 points. He won by 2.5. That's a difference of 4.2 points. That's a huge swing and anything resembling that Tuesday will surely end in a fairly comfortable loss for him.

I am not bullish on Virginia. I think McAuliffe can win but these polls aren't making me optimistic he will win.

Also: polls were clearly shifting toward Newsom at the end of the recall. That momentum carried over into election day. McAuliffe has zero momentum right now.

[PortTack]

14. Just like CA ..this isn't going to be close

[onenote]

9. No it's not.

It's not anything like the California recall.

Let me be clear: I'm a lifelong Virginia Democrat who has given money and time to the McAuliffe and will be working at the polls for him on Tuesday. I hope like hell he can pull it out. But thinking that this is going to turn out like California with a big, easy McAuliffe win is wishful thinking.

In California: the polls began showing a turn towards Newsom three weeks before election day, small at first and then quickly broadening such that by one week out, the polls had Newsom winning by double digits. There are no polls that I know of that suggest that is the pattern in Virginia.

And then there is history to consider: Newsom was elected Governor of California with nearly 62 percent of the vote. No Democrat has ever come close to that level of statewide support in Virginia. in 2008 Obama defeated McCain in Virginia by six points. A year later, repub Bob McDonell defeated an admittedly weak Democratic opponent by 17 points. In 2012, Obama again took the state, defeating Romney by around four points. A year later, Terry McAuliffe defeated a loony-toon RW nut, Ken Cucinelli, by around 2 points (56,000 votes) with Terry getting just under 48 percent of the votes -- indeed, but for the presence of a Libertarian third party candidate on the ballot, who got 6.5 of the vote, there's a good chance McAuliffe would have lost. In 2016, Hillary took Virginia by five points; a more mainstream republican, Ed Gillespie, lost to Northam a year later by 8 points, suggesting that there is more of a Trumpian segment in Virginia than folks want to admit.

So history suggests in and of itself that this is a close race involving a former governor who won election the first time he ran by a narrow margin despite facing a RW nut as his opponent.

[Raine]

7. Hopefully not so close that cheating is really easy to do. 🤨 nt

[BlueStater]

16. Depressing to see.

Even if McAullife wins, I’ll be bummed out that this was even close.

After how badly Republicans have fucked this country up, a seemingly blue state like Virginia is STILL willing to give these assholes a chance? Human beings are simply incapable of learning from their mistakes.