Thursday, February 5, 2009

Early Rasmussen: McDonnell leads all Dems in Virginia

Rising GOP stud Bob McDonnell would like to hold the election for Virginia's gubernatorial mansion today.

According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, released just 25 minutes ago, McDonnell holds 3 to 9 point leads on his potential challengers, including one Terry McAuliffe.

That represents a 2% uptick from his last polling against McAuliffe, despite the latter's incipient ad campaign.

But caution is the better part of reading polling results.

It’s still early in the political season, however, with a large percentage of Virginia voters not aware enough of any of the candidates to express a favorable or unfavorable opinion about them. Fewer than a third have strong feelings about any of the candidates.

Full polling and cross tabs here.

UPDATE!: Thirsting for more? A reader sends in a few signs of trouble for McAuliffe: Liberal blogs are worried about his electability against McDonnell (ea).

The blog Not Larry Sabato:

T-Mac released two new radio ads today. One for Norfolk and one for Richmond. You can listen to them both on his website.

The one airing in Norfolk ends with the tag line: "Not all good ideas come from Richmond", while the one airing in Richmond ends with "Bring new ideas and new energy to Richmond".

These kinds of tactics are too "cute" for a campaign in 2009- and when Terry does dumb stuff like this, it really makes me nervous about his ability to run the kind of campaign needed to keep Bob McDonnell from becoming Governor this fall.