Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) in the Virginia gubernatorial race by 7 percentage points among likely voters, according to a new Christopher Newport University poll released Friday.
The poll found McCauliffe with 45 percent support of voters while Cuccinelli has 38 percent support among likely voters. For registered voters, McAuliffe leads by 43 percentage points while Cuccinelli has 36 percentage points. Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis, meanwhile, has 10 percent support among both likely and registered voters, the poll found. The 7-point margin in McAuliffe’s favor is the same as Christopher Newport University’s Oct. 15 poll but two points lower for McAuliffe than when the university surveyed the race for its Oct. 8 poll.
Meanwhile, the poll also found that state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) leads state Sen. Mark Herring (D) by a thin 2 percentage-point margin. That race has generally been tight with different polls showing either Herring or Obenshain ahead.
The Christopher Newport University poll was conducted by the school’s Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy among 1,185 registered voters and 1,038 likely voters. It was conducted Oct. 25 to 30 and had a total margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. For likely voters the margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
