Collins on Politics

Hyland’s Campaign Claims 2-Point Lead 2 Weeks Ago;
Keam CM Sees Independents Breaking Toward Democrat

Neither Campaign Releases Current Polling Data

by Mike Collins

The race to replace 35th District Delegate and Democratic Attorney General candidate Steve Shannon is within a 2-point margin – or at least it was two weeks ago, according to polls conducted for Republican candidate Jim Hyland.

Hyland’s margin, described by his campaign manager Kevin Conroy as “within the margin of error,” reflects a tightening of the race since a July benchmark poll, when pollsters Barry Zeplowitz and Bill Lee of TelOpinion Research indicated in a confidential memo posted on Hyland’s website that Hyland held a 7-point lead 43 percent to 36 percent lead, with 21 percent undecided. The memo did not indicate the size of the sample or whether “likely voter” filters were used.

Conroy declined to make the polling results public, nor would he release tracking polls that he said have been conducted on the campaign’s behalf by the Republican Party of Virginia. In a later interview with my researcher, Michael T. Ruhl, Conroy said that the results of the study showed a “two-to-three point lead” for the Republican.

Keam’s campaign manager, Peter Clerkin, told me that he has seen “no evidence” to substantiate the Hyland campaign’s claim of a 2-point lead within the past two weeks, claiming that “from what we’re seeing this week, the undecideds are breaking our way.”

Keam himself told me that a statewide Democratic poll conducted in early October showed all races were “tightening up.” Clerkin refused to make public the results of polling conducted on behalf of the Keam campaign “as a matter of policy.”

No public polls of the open seat race – a priority one for Democrats — have been conducted by the news media, although WTOP’s Hank Silverberg today quoted state election officials as predicting a 50 percent turnout

Keam and Clerkin both predicted a turnout of between 45 and 50 percent, with Keam suggesting that any turnout figure below 40 percent would help Republicans, due to the higher number of Democratic enrollees.

Clerkin noted that the 35th is a “typical swing District where Democrats have performed well over the past six years” and said he expects an election “even closer than in years past” with overall turnout in the range of 47-50 percent.

Closer than in years past?  That’ll take some doing.

Democrat George Lovelace got 51.6 percent of the vote in a three-way special election in 1996, only to be defeated the very next year by Republican Jeannemarie Devolites Davis (wife of then-Congressman Tom Davis), who squeaked out a 51.3 percent victory. The last time there was no incumbent in the 35th, in 2003, Delegate Steve Shannon (now the Democratic nominee for Attorney General) eked out a 51.9 percent win.

Keam today predicted a similarly close 49-51 percent margin, “however it goes.”

The 35th includes Oakton, Vienna and part of Fairfax.

Sunday, November 1, 2009