To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a public poll released regarding the Virginia Democratic Attorney General’s race, between Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Tayor and former Del. Jay Jones. So at this point, even an “internal” poll by one (or more) of the campaigns is interesting to see.
So, with the usual caveats about “internal” polls (obviously keep in mind which campaign conducted them, but also look at whether the firm that did the poll is serious/legitimate – GSG definitely is; whether the questions, including “neutral” descriptions of the candidates being polled, are fair/balanced – those aren’t provided in this memo, so…got me; whether the results make intuitive sense, based on what we already know about the candidates’ name IDs; etc – 60% undecided definitely makes sense at this point, and it’s not surprising to me that a woman leads a man, given that Democratic primary voters generally have a preference for women over men, at least here in Virginia the past few years), here’s a new one by Shannon Taylor’s campaign. It finds the following:
- “Shannon Taylor leads her primary opponent, Jay Jones, by double-digits in Virginia. Voters prefer someone with her prosecutorial background and want their next Attorney General to have the experience taking on the big fights as preparation for the biggest fight of all: holding Trump and Musk accountable for their worst impacts on Virginia. Taylor’s prosecutorial experience and proven track record of winning tough fights, like flipping her Henrico County seat from Republican to Democrat, suggests she has the stronger profile and background and can secure victory in June.”
- “Both Taylor and Jones are largely unknown in the Commonwealth. Only 17% of the electorate is familiar with Taylor and an identical share is familiar with Jones. Yet, even as an essentially unknown candidate, Taylor leads Jones by double digits (25% to 15%).”
- “After giving voters balanced, positive profiles of both candidates about who they are and what they have done Taylor still leads Jones (41% to 38%).”
- “A majority prefer Virginia’s next Attorney General to have experience as a prosecutor (59%) compared to a lesser 39% who prefer the next Attorney General to have experience as a legislator. Additionally, nearly all primary voters want the next AG to stand up to Trump as he prepares an assault on Virginia’s rights and freedoms (95%) over putting politics aside and working with Trump to get things done for Virginia (4%).”
P.S. I’m hoping we get one of these “internal” polls from the Jones campaign to compare/contrast with this one. Also, a PUBLIC poll would be great…
P.P.S. Also worth noting: voters will mostly learn about these candidates via paid communications, and that’s *expensive*, so if one campaign has a major money advantage, that could definitely make the difference in this race.
UPDATE 3:33 pm: I got the descriptions of the candidates – see below for screenshots. A few things jumped out at me from these: 1) for whatever reason, Taylor’s description was significantly longer (164 words) than Jones’ description (100 words), which personally I wouldn’t do if I were the pollster (I’d make them as close in word count as possible); 2) Jones’ description mentions his family’s “multi-generational…legacy of civil rights advocacy,” but doesn’t flat-out state that Jones is African American – I definitely think the pollster should have mentioned that, just to be more realistic/accurate about how the primary might actually play out; 3) also, the description doesn’t mention that “Jay previously served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, where he was a member of the Office of Consumer Protection.”; 4) despite all this, Taylor’s advantage actually *narrowed* after the descriptions, from 10 points (25%-15%) to just 3 points (41%-38%), which is very surprising, also given the fact that in other campaigns’ “internals” I’ve seen over the years, usually the campaign doing the “internal” finds that its candidate’s advantage WIDENS after descriptions are read. Puzzling.
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