A dead heat? Nope. Poll on Rigell-Nye was way off

BY 10 on election night, three things were clear: The GOP was having a superb evening. Scott Rigell was on his way to Congress. And The Pilot needed to rethink its use of polls.

In retrospect, that poll under the "Dead Heat" headline on the front page last week - purported to show Rigell and Glenn Nye in a statistical tie - was, well, embarrassing.

Too close to call in the 2nd Congressional District?

"I laughed when I saw it," Ken Geroe, the former Democratic chairman of the district, said.

Geroe, who ran the late Rep. Owen Pickett's successful campaigns for Congress, said he dismissed the poll because, "It wasn't reflective of anything I was seeing or hearing out here."

Next time, we should hire him to do our polling.

According to unofficial results from the State Board of Elections, Republican Rigell won with more than 53 percent of the vote - way more than the 41.5 percent the poll gave him one week earlier.

Look, Christopher Newport is a fine university. But its political polling - in this race, anyway - wasn't enlightening.

Pollster and political scientist Quentin Kidd stood by his poll Wednesday and cautioned that it was simply "a snapshot in time" taken in mid- to late October and never was intended to predict the outcome of the race.

Odd. That's exactly why news organizations - and candidates - commission these things.

When I asked about the weirdly high percentage - 12 - of undecided voters that Kidd found in the district, the professor said that most of those who couldn't make up their minds apparently broke for Rigell in the final days.

Wait.

What if they weren't really undecided? What if many of them had already decided not to vote for Nye and were simply trying to decide between Rigell and third-party candidate Kenny Golden?

Perhaps some tea party types wanted to vote for the independent but worried that their protest vote might help send Nye back to Washington.

Kidd admitted that was possible.

Memo to pollsters: Next time you're taking the temperature of a three-way race, ask undecideds if they've ruled out any candidate.

Despite the aforementioned poll, it seemed clear to most of us that Rigell would win the 2nd District during a Republican resurgence. Yet the scope of his victory had to be sobering for many Democrats.

Rigell didn't just cut a broad swath through conservative Virginia Beach. He won in traditional Democratic strongholds such as Accomack County and the city of Norfolk.

In fact, the only place Nye held was Northampton County on the Eastern Shore. Those 2,119 votes would be small consolation in the wake of a blowout.

Question is, was Rigell swept into office on a rogue Republican wave or was he blessed with a weak opponent?

Several politicos are saying that Nye's drubbing was of his own making. Nye was an ineffective candidate who didn't understand his own district and who remained a cypher to many of his constituents and the party faithful.

"Nye just parachuted in, and now he's parachuting out," said former Del. Glenn Croshaw, who once served as Democratic chair for Virginia Beach.

"I don't have the slightest idea who's on his staff," Croshaw added, noting that Nye was not someone who "worked the district" or got to know local Democrats.

Worse, said Geroe, Nye's own votes in Congress alienated liberals.

"The Democratic base had absolutely no reason to vote for him," Geroe said. "If you turn off your base, you're done."

Geroe said the Democratic strategy required to win the 2nd District is essentially the same now as it was when Pickett was winning: Democrats need strong numbers in Hampton and on the Eastern Shore, a huge win in Norfolk, and "they need to stay as close as possible in Virginia Beach."

Nye didn't do that.

Oh, look. The one thing the CNU poll got right was Nye's paltry percentage of the vote. The poll showed him with about 41 percent; his actual percentage was about 42.

So what did we learn from Tuesday's results?

Two things: Never believe giddy political types - especially those on national TV - who are so demented with victory that they predict their opponents will be politically dead for the next decade.

And be careful about political polls. Especially the ones that make headlines.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net