RICHMOND, Va (WSET) — A new political poll, released by the moderate to right leaning organization the Trafalgar Group, shows a drop in support for democratic candidate Jay Jones in the race for Virginia’s next Attorney General.
Earlier this month, violent text messages between Jones and a colleague were released, where Jones suggested republican colleague Todd Gilbert should get “two bullets to the head.”
The poll has Jones now sitting at 43.1 percent when asked how many people would support him if the race were to happen today. That’s down from 48.8 percent earlier this month.
The poll also shows incumbent republican Jason Miyares receiving a major boost, with support growing nearly four percent, from 45 percent to 48.9 percent.
That’s a significant jump and we’ve also seen tightening in the other races,” Chief Pollster for the Trafalgar Group, Robert Cahaly, said. “The feedback we’re getting from people in the other races is also about that. People are telling us that the democrats not distancing themselves, not disavowing Jones, is having an effect on their votes.”
Cahaly said instances like the text scandal can play a major role in elections, so he wasn’t surprised to see the drop in support.
“There’s a lot of things in politics, the he said she said back and forth, but this one kind of permeates, and I think it’s because of the environment we’re in,” he said.
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ABC13’s political analyst, Dr. David Richards, said Trafalgar has a mixed track record when it comes to polling, so he’d like to see another poll before making any major calls. He noted that he did expect to see support for Jones fall after the messages were released.
It would be foolish to not expect to see some sort of dip in his support in the polls after that scandal,” Dr. Richards said. “We’ll probably get one more poll in the next week or so and we’ll have to see if that matches that, or if it was just sort of an outlier.”
Dr. Richards said the big question now is if the drop in support lasts.
“People are going out and early voting already, so some of that may have a genuine impact. On the other hand, the news cycle is moving pretty quickly and people have already kind of moved on a little bit. We’ll have to see what kind of lasting impact that scandal really does have, but at this point, based on this one poll, it does look like it has an impact. That’s to be expected,” he said.
