Quinnipiac Poll Shows Cuccinelli Down by 7 to McAuliffe

We get slightly better news from Quinnipiac this morning than we did from Rasmussen yesterday, which showed Cuccinelli trailing Terry "Party Animal" McAuliffe by 17 points.  The new Quinnipiac Poll shows the deficit at 7 points, more in line with most other polls in recent weeks, and a more achievable deficit to over come than 17:

While 47 percent of Virginia likely voters say the government shutdown hurt the Old Dominion "a great deal," it apparently has no impact on the governor's race, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads Republican Ken Cuccinelli 46 - 39 percent, with 10 percent for Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.  

Note that in this poll, McAuliffe is still under 50%.  Now for the bad news, Democrats are more excited about voting for McAuliffe than Republicans are about voting for Cuccinelli:

In today's survey, McAuliffe leads 92 - 3 percent among Democrats, with 2 percent for Sarvis, while Cuccinelli leads 81 - 6 among Republicans, with 11 percent for Sarvis. Independent voters are divided 39 - 39 percent, with 14 percent for Sarvis.
 Women back the Democrat 49 - 35 percent, with 10 percent for Sarvis. Men are divided with 44 percent for Cuccinelli, 42 percent for McAuliffe and 10 percent for Sarvis.
 Only 4 percent of Virginia likely voters are undecided and 7 percent say there's a "good chance" they will change their mind by Nov. 5.

Cuccinelli needs to find a way to tap into that 7 percent that say it is a "good chance" they will change their mind (hoping they aren't folks who are currently in his camp), and need to get those Sarvis voters that will most likely decide their vote is wasted for him and decide to choose between one of the two candidates that have a shot at actually being elected.  It's not impossible, but Cuccinelli has his work cut out for him.