Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Election Day in Virginia

This is an experimental (as I have time) entry to be updated throughout the day on the Election in Virginia.

Up are three statewide offices: Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General. Also up is the entire House of Delegates.

The polling has been volatile (as RCP has kept track of), but the race is neck and neck, within the margin of error in all the polling. Survey USA thought they were trending Kaine, as they had him +9 on Sunday, but only +5 on Monday, with things trending Kilgore. Their methodology was suspect, given that they polled on a big football night (Va Tech-Miami) on Saturday and again on Sunday (Redskins-Eagles), making the internals completely off, thinking that Kaine was winning the rural vote and leading amongst conservatives. Then you find out of the 1200 polled, only 600 were "likely voters" in their mind... And Survey USA has finally realized they screwed up.

House of Delegates member, and blogger on Commonwealth Conservative, Chad Dotson examined this late last night over on Redstate, coupled with his predictions in the races yesterday on redstate gives hope and reason that Kilgore will prevail.

QUOTE(SurveyUSA correction)
UNUSUAL VOLATILITY IN VA AS VOTERS GO TO BED ON ELECTION EVE: Interviews in the Virginia governor's race conducted by SurveyUSA tonight Monday 11/7 (but before President Bush appeared in Richmond) show a swing back towards Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore, causing SurveyUSA to now update its final projection in the Virginia Governor's Contest. This morning, based on interviews conducted Friday, Saturday and Sunday (11/4/05 through 11/6/05), SurveyUSA released data that showed Democrat Tim Kaine 9 points ahead of Kilgore. However, because of intra-day volatility in that data, SurveyUSA continued to poll throughout the afternoon and evening today Monday 11/7. When interviews from the most recent 3 days -- Saturday, Sunday and today Monday -- are averaged, Kaine's lead shrinks now to 5 points. When interviews from just the past two days -- Sunday and today Monday -- are averaged, the contest is closer yet. When interviews from Monday only are considered, the contest is tied, but the Margin of Sampling error from just the one day of interviewing is high enough, and the results aberrant enough, that SurveyUSA is uncomfortable reporting just Monday-only data. For the record, SurveyUSA goes into the clubhouse with its final projection (based on Saturday, Sunday and Monday polling): Kaine 50%, Kilgore 45%. A closer outcome still is possible.


It should be noted that Bush drew 7000+ (many more were turned away) in the largest rally in statewide office history in Virginia last night...

UPDATE: 11pm

WOW. Kilgore loses by 5 points, but the GOP candidates for Lt. Governor and Attorney General win...
by 2 points and 0.25 points respectively.

http://sbe.virginiainteractive.org/

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