There is a new poll out that seems to corroborate the idea that Barack Obama may have a good chance at winning Virginia after all:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a narrow lead over Republican John McCain in Virginia, according to a poll by Insider Advantage that was published today by the Southern Political Report.
The poll, conducted Monday, found Obama drawing 51 percent of the vote compared to McCain’s 45 percent.
Insider Advantage surveyed 436 likely voters by telephone. The findings closely match a Washington Post poll last week that showed Obama with a 3 point lead over McCain among likely voters. Obama led by six points among registered voters.
On the other hand, a Mason-Dixon poll conducted last week for NBC News had McCain ahead of Obama by 3 points, 47 to 44 percent. Other polls also show McCain narrowly ahead of Obama in Virginia.
Actually, as of today, that Mason-Dixon poll is the only recent poll showing McCain ahead of Obama, as this chart from RealClearPolitics shows clearly:
The fact that the Mason-Dixon poll is the only pll that still shows McCain leading in Virginia at this point, combined with the fact that it’s data is more than a week old now and doesn’t take into account either the detriorating economic situation or last week’s debate, suggests rather strongly that it is no longer a valid measurement of public opinion.
Moreover, the trend of the RCP poll average in Virginia has been moving in Obama’s favor for quite some time:
In the week or so after the Republican convention, the idea that Virginia would turn blue this year seemed to be more and more remote. As the election has taken shape over the past two weeks, though, it has become very clear that John McCain could very well do something that no Republican has done since Barry Goldwater in 1964; lose Virginia in a Presidential election.
For the moment at least, I would characterize Virginia as leaning toward Obama.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
[...] they’d better hurry. Last week three new polls from Rasmussen, Insider Advantage, and CNN all showed Barack Obama with a statistically significant lead in Virginia, and, with the [...]