New poll shows Abigail Spanberger with a double-digit lead in Virginia’s governor race

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

• Anne Kramer:

  Let’s break this down a little bit. You have Spanberger leading by double digits. What’s going on here, and how did you get to this point?

• Scott Clement:

  Spanberger is benefiting from a few things. One, most voters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance in Virginia and this is a really common pattern in Virginia the year after presidential election that tends to push back against the president, sort of an early warning sign of the midterms. Down to the actual voters. Voters have a lot of different concerns. But one of the big patterns helping Spanberger is she has a big lead among political independents, 27 percentage points. She’s also more popular than Winsome Earle-Sears personally. So she’s got a couple things at her back.

• Shawn Anderson:

  Now, 12 points at this point in the race, a 12 point lead overall. That is a heck of a lead this close to the election, isn’t it?

• Scott Clement:

  It’s a wide lead and we’ve seen these races tighten sometimes in the final month, not always getting back to a full comeback. But it’s a significant lead. If it holds to election day, would be one of the larger victories for governor in Virginia.

• Anne Kramer:

  Talk to us about independent voters. Where are they going for Spanberger here? Because that’s what it shows, right?

• Scott Clement:

  That’s right. You see a couple of different patterns there. I mean, one it really mirrors some of the ratings of Trump and group that he did well. Spanberger is also uniquely doing well among independents compared with down ballot Democrats. So that’s actually one of the reasons that the Virginia attorney general and lieutenant governor races are closer, is that Democrat Jay Jones and Democrat because Allah Hashmi have smaller advantages among political independents. Democrats and Republicans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly lining up behind their party’s candidates.

• Shawn Anderson:

  How much of a factor, if you could find it, is President Trump in shaping voter attitudes, particularly with what’s going on with the federal government shutdown right now?

• Scott Clement:

  It’s big and it’s difficult to measure. We asked people to rate how important Trump was in their vote for governor, and you had a big majority saying that it was at least fairly important in their vote. It was particularly important for people who disapprove of Trump, but also for people who approve. And we asked the same question eight years ago during the governor’s election, then and more people say that Trump is important to their vote today than they did eight years ago. So it seemed very high at the time. It’s even higher this time around.