A new Washington Post poll seems to show that Virginia has slipped out of John McCain’s hands:
Barack Obama has opened up an eight-point lead over Republican John McCain in Virginia, and the Democrat is entering the final week of the campaign with several core advantages when it comes to turning out his supporters, according to a new Washington Post poll
The survey highlights the challenges facing McCain and the GOP during the final stretch of the election, as Obama has made evident progress in the Old Dominion the past month.
By wide margins, Virginia voters think that Obama is the candidate who would do more to bring needed change to Washington, who understands the economic challenges people are facing and who is the more honest and trustworthy of the two rivals. Still, there remains widespread apprehension over whether the Democratic nominee would make a good commander in chief.
And the underlying numbers are far from encouraging for Virginia Republicans:
Seven in 10 Obama supporters said they are “very enthusiastic” about voting for him, an increase from the late September poll. By contrast, 39 percent are that keen on McCain’s candidacy, a 6 percentage-point dip over that period.
Obama has an almost 2 to 1 advantage over McCain in Northern Virginia, surpassing even the 60 percent mark that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) racked up in the region during their successful campaigns in 2005 and 2006.
Obama is also performing far better elsewhere in Virginia than Democrats have done in recent state and federal elections. He and McCain each drew 48 percent of the vote outside Northern Virginia, a signal that Obama’s repeated visits, as well as his multimillion-dollar advertising blitz, has softened the GOP base in the more rural parts of the state.
(…)
Obama holds a 17-point lead in Hampton Roads, a crucial area in Virginia elections, while McCain is narrowly ahead in the Richmond area and in the Shenandoah Valley and southwestern Virginia. Even in those areas, though, Obama is breaking the 40 percent mark.
Obama has solidified the Democratic base in Virginia, drawing almost universal support from African Americans and self-identified Democrats, and he has also made major inroads with white voters in Virginia. McCain is winning white voters by 12 points, but Bush carried them by 36 percentage points in 2004.
There’s also a new Zogby poll that has Obama up by eight in the Old Dominion, and, as this chart from RealClearPolitics shows, Virginia started slipping away from McCain around the time that the financial crisis stated, the same time the rest of the country did:
The odds of this turning around are pretty much non-existent.
