On Monday morning, the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University released a poll showing that Congressman Scott Taylor (VA-2) is leading Democratic challenger Elaine Luria by seven points. Although voter enthusiasm has increased among Democrats, the incumbent Republican has a 50-43 lead with a margin of error of four points just 22 days before the November 6 midterm election.
The poll was conducted using 798 phone interviews of registered voters.
In this closely watched congressional race and target of the Democratic agenda to flip control of the House of Representatives, Assistant Director of the Wason Center Dr. Rachel Bitecofer said, “Unlike his Republican peers in Congress, so far Taylor seems to be weathering a tough electoral environment well.”
In the southeastern Virginia district, Taylor is polling better than President Donald Trump who has a 46 percent favorable rating and an unfavorable rating of 51 percentage points. Although Trump carried the district during the 2016 presidential election, Governor Ralph Northam (D) won it just a year later, giving worry to those who believed that Taylor would succumb to increased Democratic support in the district.
The two candidates in Virginia’s Second Congressional District both have long military backgrounds in an area which has the most active and retired military population in the U.S. Taylor, a former Navy seal and Iraq combat veteran, is currently leading retired Navy commander Luria by 22 percentage points in military households.
Partisanship does play a major role in race with both candidates taking over 90 percent of their respective party’s voter base, with Independents breaking for Taylor by nine points.
When it comes to the nationwide narrative of the most women ever running for office, Luria only has a five point lead among women voters, with an even narrower gap among voters under 45 with a lead of just two percentage points.
Furthermore, the poll revealed that out of the 72 percent of voters that were aware of the investigation into Taylor’s campaign workers for collecting fraudulent signatures to help put an independent candidate on the ballot, the vast majority said that “it does not matter” to them.