President Obama traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday (October 27) to make an appearance on behalf of the Democratic candidates for statewide office.  The location very likely was chosen because Creigh Deeds and the other Democrats had been polling better in the Virginia Tidewater than in the rest of the state. But polling information released by State Senator Ken Cuccinelli, Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General, indicates that the tide already had turned in the Tidewater and the the effort came too late.

The Cuccinelli letter, dated October 27 and circulated today, concerned the results of his campaign’s polls and the impact of negative ads run by his opponent.  According to Cuccinelli:

We see daily tracking numbers, so we can see trends. The tone and tenor of our opponent’s ads became sharply negative this past week, so let’s look at the comparison of where we were last Sunday to this Sunday, and let’s isolate that part of Virginia where we’ve been being hit the hardest with his negative ads – Southeast Virginia (referred to as the Norfolk media market, though it includes the whole area). . . .

My opponent appears to think that there’s ground to be gained in SE Va. . . . so he’s pouring it on there. He has been running negative radio ads since the very beginning of September, with T.V. since the end of September. . . .

On October 18^th, they were up in the polling in the Norfolk media market (the only market in Virginia they were leading in). And they were up by a lot – 15 points. The early part of the week they dramatically escalated their negative attacks, departing farther from reality in their attacks than ever before.

So, by the end of the week, how did that work out for them?

Incredibly, we saw the single biggest one week swing in ANY media market anywhere – 25 points! By Sunday the 25^th, we were up by 10 in the Norfolk media market. We now lead in every single media market.

The polling results reported by Cuccinelli are consistent with all of the recent polls measuring the Virginia statewide races.  In the McDonnell-Deeds face-off for governor, the Real Clear Politics average as of this morning had McDonnell up by 13.4 points:

………………………………………………McD     Deeds
RCP Average        10/18 – 10/27    –     54.0    40.6    McDonnell +13.4
Rasmussen Reps     10/27                       54         41       McDonnell +13
SurveyUSA        10/26                              58         41       McDonnell +17
Washington Post    10/25                         55         44      McDonnell +11
VCU           10/25                                      54         36      McDonnell +18
Clarus Research    10/19                          49          41     McDonnell +8

Every poll released this week has put the Republicans up by double-digits — including the Public Policy Polling result (+15) which is excluded from the RCP average because of PPP’s Democratic Party affiliation. If the PPP result is included with this week’s other polls, they aggregate 4,602 likely voters with an O’Donnell advantage of +14 points.  Even assuming that this represents the high end of the margin of error, it puts McDonnell up by about 11 points, and rising.

The Cuccinelli poll results are significant for the Republican ticket as a whole because the three candidates for statewide office have been returning very close poll numbers in all demographics.  President Obama got an enthusiastic reception in Norfolk, to be sure, but it seems very likely he was preaching to the choir.