Lower social pressure to vote in the VA Gubernatorial Election

Virginia is one of two states holding gubernatorial elections this year, and the race is starting to become interesting.  Most interesting to me is the recent poll that Virginia voters dislike both candidates:

"Democrat McAuliffe gets a split 38-38 percent favorability rating, compared to Republican Cuccinelli’s negative 34-51 percent rating"

This is not a good sign for either candidate, just seven weeks out from the election - and these polling numbers have an interesting effect on the voter turnout that we will see in November. 

David Johnson's article "Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance" outlines one incentive to voting as  "social approval".   We see this when "individuals vote in order to avoid the social pressures their friends, family, neighbors, and professional, philosophical, or political colleagues would place upon them if they did not."  The social pressure of an election is determined by a whole host of things, but I believe one of them is the likeability of the candidates (or how excited voters become about their candidate of choice).  To me, the low favorability ratings of the candidates imply that potential voting abstainers will face less pressure as it will be more understandable that they did not vote.  One could see how if both candidates were extremely likeable, and people were generally very excited about the election, there would be increased social pressure to vote.  If the reason a voter is driven to the polls is primarily based on a certain amount of social pressure, it is possible that in this gubernatorial election, that pressure is lessened due to the candidates' strongly unfavorable perception.