Republican Ken Cuccinelli has pulled within 2 percentage points of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial race with just four days to go, a new poll shows.
The
Emerson College Polling Society says McAuliffe's lead over Cuccinelli is now 42 percent to 40 percent, with Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis lagging behind and taking 13 percent of the vote.
McAuliffe's lead is within the poll's margin of error, which Emerson says is 3.24 percent.
The society says the survey, conducted Oct. 25-30 among 874 likely voters, shows that Cuccinelli is "gaining momentum" going into the final weekend before the election.
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Early in October, Emerson College had found that Cuccinelli was trailing McAuliffe by 5 points. The new poll comes just two days after a Quinnipiac University poll stated that McAuliffe was ahead by 4 points.
Emerson found that Sarvis, the Libertarian, is hijacking more votes from Cuccinelli than from McAuliffe. Eleven percent of Republicans support the third-party candidate, with only 6 percent of Democrats backing him.
Emerson's poll notes that none of the three candidates is very popular with the voters. McAuliffe has a minus 15-point favorability margin, with 37 percent viewing him favorably and 52 percent unfavorably. Cuccinelli stands at 38 percent viewing him positively and 56 percent unfavorably. The lesser-known Sarvis shows 22 percent favorable, 19 percent unfavorable.
Whoever they favor, most Virginians believe McAuliffe will win the election on Tuesday, the poll notes.
"Despite his slim lead in the poll, 55 percent of Virginia likely voters believe that McAuliffe will be elected, with only 28 percent predicting that Cuccinelli will be their next governor," the Emerson College Polling Society states.
The poll is the seventh this week on the Virginia race. All have given McAuliffe the edge, but the lead has been narrowing as the week progressed. The other six polls gave the Democrat a lead of between 4 and 15 percentage points, with Sarvis taking between 8 and 12 percent of the vote.
According to The Washington Times, with the race narrowing, the Republican and Democratic candidates are hoping to entice Sarvis' supporters to
change their vote.
Cuccinelli has attacked Sarvis' credentials while McAuliffe has made a point of not criticizing the third-party candidate for fear of alienating his supporters who might still be swayed to shift their support.
Former Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who is seen as a Libertarian "folk hero," will join Cuccinelli in Richmond on Monday in a last-ditch bid to sway voters. His son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, joined Cuccinelli on the campaign trail earlier this week.
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