Poll results vary in Fifth District race

Pollsters working for political parties and candidates will contact thousands of people in the 5^th Congressional District this week, trying to detect shifts in voters’ support for Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello and his Republican challenger, state Sen. Robert Hurt.

Results from professional polls such as these determine which races the national Democratic and Republican parties infuse with six-figure support to pay for TV commercials.

The parties and campaigns will guard their poll results closely. They are political secrets, and their impact can be discerned only when campaign contributions are reported publicly, weeks from now.

Candidates who receive money from the national parties are perceived as having a good chance to win in close races.

But many other polls’ numbers are out in public view and, depending on which poll someone might read, Hurt leads Perriello by 26 percentage points — or by two points.

Or maybe Hurt’s lead is six points, if a third poll is to be believed.

A SurveyUSA poll, conducted for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, credited Hurt with a 61-35 lead last week. In July, SurveyUSA released a poll showing Hurt with a 23-point lead.

The numbers looked familiar to the Perriello campaign, which in 2008 trailed incumbent Rep. Virgil Goode by a 64-30 margin in a SurveyUSA poll. Perriello won the election by 727 votes that year.

The SurveyUSA poll “is out to lunch. It’s a real outlier,” said Perriello spokeswoman Jessica Barba.

On Thursday, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6^th District, cautioned Republicans in Lynchburg not to believe the polls but instead work for voter turnout on Nov. 2.

Two other polls suggest Hurt holds a much smaller lead.

One of those polls was paid for by the Republican-leaning American Action Forum, and it gave Hurt a 49-43 lead among likely voters at the end of July. That poll did not include independent candidate Jeffrey Clark of Danville.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that its own poll showed Hurt with a 44-42 lead. Democrats said the race was in a statistical tie because of the poll’s margin of error, which was 4.9 percent.

Clark was supported by 6 percent of likely voters, according to the Democratic poll.

SurveyUSA had reported 2 percent support for Clark.

Some of the poll disclosures Tuesday may have been driven by a New York Times story that reported the national Democratic Party was deciding which races it had the best chances of winning.

Several Republican news releases Tuesday insisted the Democratic Party was ready to cast Perriello aside.

“Sunday, Washington liberals signaled they’re prepared to abandon Tom Perriello in search of greener political pastures after he compromised his career for their agenda,” said Andy Sere of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The New York Times story named Perriello among the most-threatened incumbents, but it never said whether national Democrats were thinking about dropping the freshman congressman.

Another professional voice also spoke up in the 5^th District last week.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said in his Labor Day prognostication that Republicans were likely to win 47 House seats away from Democrats.

But Sabato said Virginia’s 5^th District race was a tossup. That’s the same status he gave it earlier this summer.

The 5^th District was the only House race where Sabato missed the call in 2008, when he said it was leaning Republican.