Election Day Nuggets in Virginia

So there's been a lot of debate about what the balance of turnout will be in Virginia today between what we would describe as 'hard core' primary voters (those who turned out for one of the low interest contests in 2005, 2006, or 2007) and more 'casual' ones (those whose only primary voting experience since 2004 was the Presidential one last year.)

Our polls suggest a little more than 50% of the voters today will be those 'casual' ones. Since 150,000 people turned out in 2006 and we would expect most all of them to come out today, that would put overall turnout around 300,000. Most folks, however, seem to expect a lower turnout...perhaps even as low as that same 150,000 from 2006.

Using the data from our final poll, here's what the numbers would be in various turnout scenarios from 150,000 all the way up to 410,000:

Turnout	Deeds %	McAuliffe %	Moran %
150,000	46	19	26
170,000	45	20	26
190,000	44	21	25
210,000	43	22	25
230,000	43	23	25
250,000	42	23	24
270,000	42	24	24
290,000	41	24	24
310,000	41	25	24
330,000	41	25	24
350,000	40	25	24
370,000	40	26	24
390,000	40	26	24
410,000	40	26	24

There's not much doubt Creigh Deeds wins under any turnout scenario, although lower turnout would push his margin closer to 20 points and higher turnout would keep it more around 15. Turnout does have a strong ability to determine who finishes second...if it is under 250,000 votes Brian Moran will likely be the runner up while if it pushes up over 300k Terry McAuliffe is more likely to be. And of course keep in mind that we conducted most of the interviews for our final poll on Saturday and things could have shifted some since then, especially considering how fluid the electorate has been in this contest.

If I really had to make a prediction I'd guess Deeds wins with 45% to 29% for Moran and 26% for McAuliffe.

One other interesting note: under the low turnout scenario (150k) outlined above just 21% of the electorate today would be African Americans.