Political pros will dispute the numbers. But that’s inside baseball. For an ordinary voter, the headline number is the only one that matters.

Northam’s team know that, which is why they released an internal poll from February showing him ahead of Perriello 38 percent to 19 percent.

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That was a mistake.

In releasing internal numbers, Northam has set a bar for himself in a number of ways.

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He’s established a floor for his vote, setting expectations for further growth, with no room for decline or stagnation.

The release itself sets an expectation that his internal numbers are now no longer internal and will have to be released with each new set of public polling data. That’s not good if those internal numbers are heading sideways.

For a sitting lieutenant governor backed by the Democratic establishment to be polling at only 38 percent in an internal poll at this stage of the campaign shows that he is weak and Perriello is for real.

It is the last issue that’s most problematic for Northam. Presumed front-runners normally don’t want to acknowledge they have challengers.

Northam can no longer do that. Either by his own numbers or Christopher Newport’s, Perriello is running a serious campaign that could not just win the primary but possibly the general election.

This puts Northam in a tighter bind.

He could follow the Eric Cantor school of thought and attempt to bury Perriello under negative ads.

But as Cantor showed in his ill-fated 2014 House primary against now-Rep. Dave Brat, this could backfire, with Northam looking like he is punching down at Perriello while giving Perriello the opportunity to say Northam is so desperate that he’s gone negative.

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Northam could engage Perriello on the issues. That would expose how Northam and Perriello aren’t all that different when it comes to policies they would back as governor.

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But not all is doom and gloom for Northam.

June primaries tend to have very low turnout: slightly less than 320,000 votes were cast in the last contested Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2009. By comparison, more than 1.9 million were cast in that year’s general election.

The people who show up tend to be older, vote regularly and are well-informed about the candidates and issues.

Those factors would all seem to work in Northam’s favor. If this primary follows its predecessors, it means the voters 45 or older where he leads Perriello in the Christopher Newport poll should carry him to victory. That assumes a lot.

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And then there is the Trump factor.

While Northam has been as anti-Trump as the rest of the state’s Democrats, Perriello has made resistance his campaign theme.

It has helped motivate his supporters. It sustains him on the stump. And, thanks to President Trump, whose approval rating in Virginia is at 37 percent in the CNU poll, it also could be the wind at his back.

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Perriello communications director Ian Sams told me that “for voters, it’s not a question of right of left; it’s whether you’re helping them move up or down the economic ladder.”

Sams said Perriello’s agenda “resonate[s] across the political spectrum, even with disaffected voters who may have supported President Trump last November.”

It may be wishful thinking to believe Perriello can compete for Trump voters in a general election.