Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: End of the line for Ken Cuccinelli

Leading Off:

•VA-Gov: For several weeks now, we've been watching Ken Cuccinelli slowly falling, Wile E. Coyote-style, into the box canyon while the slide-whistle plays, and it looks like Monday was the day the little puff of smoke finally appeared at the bottom. For starters, the Washington Post, via SRBI, issued what may be its final poll of the race, and they find Democrat Terry McAuliffe opening up a double-digit lead on Republican Ken Cuccinelli: 51-39, with Libertarian Robert Sarvis still clocking in at 8. (One month ago, WaPo found T-Mac 47, Cuccinelli 39, Sarvis 10.) Cuccinelli's favorables are now an unsalvageable 41/58, but he's still faring better than the national GOP, who rack up 32/65 favorables.

The attacks on Cuccinelli's social conservatism must be working, because the gender gap is just staggering: Cuccinelli is winning 45-44 among men, but McAuliffe leads 58-34 among women. Downballot, it's looking like a clean sweep for the Dems, with Ralph Northam leading E.W. Jackson 52-39 for Lt. Governor, and Mark Herring leading Mark Obenshain 49-46 for Attorney General.

The other data point from Monday showing the direness of Cuccinelli's situation is fundraising data released by VPAP for the month of October. During the Oct. 1-Oct. 23 period, McAuliffe raised $8.1 million and ends with $1.6 million cash on hand. Cuccinelli, who was essentially triaged by national Republicans weeks ago, raised $2.9 million and has $604K CoH.

When I saw a WaPo article titled "Why Terry McAuliffe is beating Ken Cuccinelli in 5 charts" I assumed it'd just be rehash of poll data about their favorables and Cuccinelli's extreme positions ... but no, it's chock full of great new data about campaign spending, both overall (T-Mac and allies have outspent Cooch and allies $22 mil to $14 mil total) and specifically on TV. In particular, T-Mac's campaign alone has spent more than Cuccinelli, the RGA, and all other GOP groups combined, without even factoring in the VA Dems, Next Gen, Planned Parenthood, and so on.

There are also handy breakdowns of TV spending by week and by TV market (while the GOP has avoided getting blown out in the downstate markets, they've been doubled-up on in the expensive DC market, which is, y'know, where most of the voters live). The most telling graphs are the week-by-week ones (one of which you can see above), where in the last few weeks the Dems are peaking just as the GOP is pointing almost straight down. There's some chicken-and-egg in how the Democrats' financial edge got built up (i.e. GOP donors shut their wallets after Cuccinelli started tanking in the polls, leading to the ad drawdown and further tanking in the polls), but at this point, there really seems no doubt how the last week is going to play out.