Parties Look for National Referendum in Va. Election Results

Ken Cuccinelli, left, speaks in Hot Springs, Va, Sept. 10, 2013. Terry McAuliffe speaks at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., Sept. 5, 2013.

Steve Helber/AP Photo

Virginia voters will choose a new governor tonight in a decision will send ripples across the national political landscape.

Both political parties have poured vast resources into this race because both see the outcome as a bellwether—albeit for very different reasons—not only for the 2014 mid-term elections but for future presidential elections.

Polling in recent weeks indicates that the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, comes into election day with a lead over Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli—though Cuccinelli's campaign insists that he has momentum in the final days.

Both men, however, are flawed candidates who are odd fits for Virginia's deepening purple hue.

McAuliffe is better known as one of the Democratic Party's most skilled political animals than the middle-of-the-road candidate he pitched himself as to voters during the campaign.

And tea party-backed Cuccinelli ran a fiercely conservative campaign in a state that is becoming less and less Republican with each passing day, largely as a result of demographic changes in the vote-rich DC suburbs.

Neither candidate inspired voters in this race with their scandal-plagued candidacies.

McAuliffe ran into trouble for ties to a beleaguered green car company, and Cuccinelli was tied to a gift scandal that embroiled the state's Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.

And many saw a vote for one man as really a vote against the other.

Cuccinelli has been unsuccessful in overcoming the accusations by his opponents that his social conservative views on abortion, gay marriage and contraception are too extreme for Virginians. Arguably his ideological steadfastness, not moderation, was the key part of his playbook.

"His positions on social issues are well to the right of this increasingly moderate state," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for politics. "It's a Mid-Atlantic state, not a Southern state."

Cuccinelli cut his teeth on the national political stage as the attorney general who became "literally the first human being" to challenge the Affordable Care Act in the courts once it became law in 2010, as he often boasts on the campaign trail.

If he wins, Cuccinelli and Republicans including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who came to Virginia this week, believe that more than anything else, the election will serve as a referendum on the health care law.

"I think what will happen in the aftermath of [a Cuccinelli victory] is a growing number of Democrats will start calling for changes or repeal of Obamacare," said Rubio on Monday. "I predict that in about six or eight months, a lot of people who had voted for this law in the Democratic Party will claim to have never met it."

But Democrats will paint a Cuccinelli loss as a cautionary tale for his tea party-tinged brand of conservatism and those in his party with presidential ambitions who are considering framing their candidacy in a way that mirrors his gubernatorial campaign.

Perhaps the biggest warning sign for Cuccinelli is his standing among women voters, who out-vote men and are a key indicator in national elections.

A Monday Quinnipiac poll showed him trailing McAuliffe 50-36 among that critically important group.

And Democrats have launched a concerted strategy to exacerbate Cuccinelli's problems with women with an unrelenting stream of negative ads labeling his positions on abortion and other social issues as extreme.