And you have to think Doug is going to do better than 8% as the voters get to know him better. Should be an interesting race!

...Leslie's gonna win! :)

Welcome to another exciting tale from "Polling to predict the nominee!"  Playing the role of front-runner female candidate who's building her message around the experience she gained during the Clinton Administration during this Democratic primary, ladies and gentlemen, please but your hands together for...Leslie Byrne!

(hehe, I'm sorry, I don't actually care one way or the other for any of the candidates, but I simply couldn't resist).

Doug is a good guy, but I just don't see him winning this thing. I'm not sure what his local districts are, but I think he would make a great candidate for the legislator or board of supervisors in a few years.

IMHO, Doug and Mike Turner who is running against Judy Feder in the 10th CD primary have one thing in common. Neither has money to finance ads or even bumper stickers and lit. With no name recognition and no money, tilting at windmills seems to me to be a bit of an understatement for both of them.

How can Doug even hire a paid campaign manger if he can't even money for the essential basics ?

I don't doubt that Doug is a good man and someday will be a viable candidate for a local or even Va. General Assembly race. But given the obvious impossibility of winning a primary against Leslie or Gerry makes me wonder why he decided to file for a Congressional race. Who is his advisor ? (That's a rhetorical question. He made the decision to run so it doesn't much matter who told him he should).

Back to reality: I'd guess that a lot of the undecideds want to wait until they see if Gerry decides to run. So far he has only formed an Exploratory Committee. We do know that Gerry is getting a phenominally positive response from the people who have contacted him so far, which I assume means indication of financial support if he does decide to run. My personal feeling is that either Leslie or Gerry could easily beat any GOP opponent including Tom Davis if he decides to run for re-election (which I doubt).

Bottom line for me is that the 11th CD is ours for the taking (if we don't get overconfident and fail to work hard) whether our nominee is Leslie or Jerry. And I believe either would serve us very, very well for many years as a House companion to soon-to-be senior Senator Jim Webb.

         Purple to Blue for Virginia in 2008.

                          T.C.

If the Presidential race has taught us anything, it's that early polling is BS.

Plus, look at their sample- women, partisans, seniors. A sure fire way to lose is to concentrate on these groups.

Most of us have forgotten how many elections she has lost, but while she won the LT Gov primary, she lost when it counts- i.e. the general election.

Also, isn't it interesting they didn't do or didn't release any general election polling numbers?!?

Perhaps because Leslie would lose?

What were the Harris Miller v Jim Webb polling numbers early on?

Did Leslie do any polling when she tried to primary Jim Moran?

Did she do any polling for her failed senate primary against Mark Warner?

Did calling Mark Warner "A RAT," and "Republican Light" give her numbers a boost?

How about the polling when she lost this seat as an INCUMBANT to TOM DAVIS?!

While JMDD lost to Chap- Leslie is no Chap Petersen.

Cant wait to see conventional wisdom debunked yet again!

Its a shame to see blogs like RK blindly buying into press releases and not asking the hard questions...

...a bit much.  Most of us here strongly support Leslie Byrne for Congress; why wouldn't we be happy about poll results indicating that she is starting the race in excellent shape?  Also, I'd point out that these poll results correspond almost exactly to what I thought, a priori, would be the case -- that  Leslie is very popular in the 11th CD and has very high name recognition.  Given that this poll corresponds to all the anecdotal information I have, I'm inclined to believe that it's fairly accurate.  The caveat is that there is a high percentage of undecideds.  If most of those people are actual or potential Connolly or Denneny supporters, Leslie will have a really tough race on her hands.  If most of those people are actual or potential Byrne supporters, she's lookin' good.  Go Leslie!

Leslie Byrne won the 11th CD in 2005 not once but twice -- first she defeated Chap Petersen 46%-43% in the Dem. primary, then she beat Bill Bolling 55%-45% in the general election.  

I didn't realize the LG race between Chap/Leslie was so close in the 11th.  Good thing for her that they appear to have a truce.

that 400 is nowhere near an accurate sample!  Go back to your textbooks - it's generally agreed that you need over 900 to be statistically accurate.  

statistics class.  Here is a good explanation of sample size and polling "margin of error."

...while people are inundated with opinion polls, there is still considerable misunderstanding about how they work. Especially during elections, when there are polls practically every day, one often hears people expressing skepticism about polls, saying that they feel the polls are not representative because they, personally, and all the people they know, have never been asked their opinion. Surely, they reason, if so many polls are done, every person should get a shot at answering these surveys? That fact that no pollster has contacted them or their friends and families seem to make the poll results suspect in their eyes, as if the pollsters are using some highly selective group of people to ask and leaving out 'ordinary' people.

This betrays a misunderstanding of statistics and the sampling size needed to get good results. The so-called "margin of error" quoted by statisticians is found by dividing 100 by the square root of the size of the sample. So if you have a sample of 100, then the margin of error is 10%. If you have a sample size of 625, then the margin of error drops sharply to 4%. If you have a sample size of 1111, the margin of error becomes 3%. To get to 2% requires a sample size of 2500.

In short, it's not an issue of being "statistically accurate," whatever that means, it's an issue of how low you want your margin of error to be.  All else being equal, the larger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error.  It's not binary, it's a gradient...the higher you go in terms of sample size, the lower the margin of error.  Note that you never get a ZERO margin of error, if that's what you mean by "accurate."  The bottom line is that there's no reason to think this poll is any less meaningful than any other poll with a similar sample size and corresponding margin of error.

Good post, Lowell.  There is so much misunderstandng about polling it begs for statistics (beyond introductory level) to be required in schools.

We all know he's running, but that's besides the point.

We need good government in Fairfax more than we need pork coming from Washington.  You've had so much fun as a transactional politician here in Fairfax Gerry Boy, just keep your sorry butt in Fairfax and commute to your sorry office (you are tired of) right here in Fairfax.

You don't care about how much sprawl (with no interest in solutions) you dish out to us, so why should we send you and your money bags to Congress?

at the federal level. Having honed his skills at selling out his constituents in Fairfax, Mr. Connolly will certainly find many ready takers for selling favors as a US Congressman.

"Connolly just finished spending 1.1 million dollars in his re-election campaign for Chairman on November 6th."

That's right, Gerry Connolly spent pretty much all that money on himself, even though he was never seriously challenged.   Almost none of that money went to help other Democrats like Chap Petersen, Janet Oleszek, George Barker, etc.  Hmmmm...you think $100,000 could have helped Janet Oleszek pick up 100 votes to defeat Ken Cuccinelli?  How about Dale Evans, who lost by just over 1,000 votes (out of around 175,000 cast)?  Maybe Jay Donahue could have used a chunk of Gerry's change, given that he lost by just 677 votes out of 11,941 cast?   Anyway, you get the picture.

Connolly would sell his soul to the devil if it helped him get elected.

Connolly is all about Connolly.  Democratic Party?  What's that?  Oh yea, something to help Connolly get elected.

I'm undecided in this race, but keep in mind:

-- the polls didn't work so well in New Hampshire
-- it's way too early...there have been no debates, no nothing
-- 400 people is not really a representative sample

Take this poll with the requisite grain (pillar?) of salt. :)

is plenty if done properly and GSG is a well-known respected pollster.

Many of us, his constituents, have been wondering about this.

The biggest question of this election for 11th District/Fairfax County citizens:

Will Connolly do the most harm as FFX County BOS Chair or in congress?