A lot of attention has been paid to Jon Corzine's numbers in the New Jersey governor's race, where he can't seem to get above 42% of the vote in polls. This is, of course, of less significance now than it was a few months ago, since 43% will probably be enough to win the election, but it's still an interesting observation.

There's a similar, less heavily commented upon phenomenon going on in the Virginia Governor's race. The polling for October is, at first glance, all over the place. McDonnell consistently leads, but the polls show leads of 7, 8, 8, 9, 11, 14, and 19 points.

When we look at the individual candidates' numbers, however, we see a different pattern.  Creigh Deeds' numbers are very stable: 31, 40, 40, 41, 43, 43, 44. McDonnell, on the other hand, comes in at 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, and 59 percent of the vote.

You can read into this whatever you want I suppose, but the most plausible explanation is that soft voters are leaning against Deeds, and the wide variance we see in the various McDonnell leads can be almost entirely attributed to how hard undecideds are pushed.  The fact that polling with small numbers of undecideds generally shows the largest McDonnell leads is not good news for Deeds, or for Virginia Democrats.

UPDATE: This analysis is without the new PPP poll, which again shows Deeds at 40%, McDonnell at 52%