As it has been for the past several months, the contest between John McCain and Barack Obama for the Old Dominion’s 13 Electoral Votes remains all tied up:
The presidential race in Virginia is now dead even, with Barack Obama and John McCain each drawing 44% of the vote, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.
If “leaners” are factored in, McCain leads by a statistically insignificant one percentage point 48% to 47%.
Despite the close race, one potentially worrisome fact for the Democratic candidate is that nearly one out of two Virginia voters (47%) now view him unfavorably. That’s up from 44% in May and June. The number who see him in a Very Unfavorable light stands at 31%.
McCain’s unfavorables, by contrast, have held steady at 36% for the past two months and only 13% have a Very Unfavorable view of him.
Just last month Obama edged ahead of McCain in Virginia for the first time 45% to 44%. Although that lead was statistically insignificant, the narrowness of the contest in a state that has gone Republican in every presidential contest since 1968 has buoyed Democratic hopes of adding it to their column this November.
While this is good news for McCain in that it doesn’t show Obama pulling far ahead in Virginia, the fact that the two remain statistically tied in a state that has gone Republican for the past 40 years and in which George W. Bush won by more than 200,000 votes in 2000 and by a similarly wide margin in 2004 would seem to make any chance that Virginia will be part of a Republican “Solid South” in 2008 slim indeed.
Moreover, the fact that the Obama campaign is clearly gearing up for a major effort in all parts of Virginia would seem to indicate that they think they have a chance to win the state, and, more importantly, that they have the resources to at least make things very rough for McCain here.
Even if McCain wins here, it’s going to be by a slim margin and it may not be enough to decide the General Election.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
[...] in Warner’s favor and the fact that we’re seeing this result at the same time that the Presidential race in Virginia is a statistical tie cannot be good news for Gilmore. [...]