There aren’t many Obama for President yard signs in Troutville — not even at the winery with the fancy bed and breakfast, and certainly not in the window at the rustic country store.
Democrat Barack Obama may be leading the state in the polls, but finding any sizable thicket of Obama signs in this region requires a trip to Roanoke or Blacksburg, where the Democratic and academic populations cluster in pockets of this reddest region in Virginia. This election year, Roanoke and New River are surely two valleys divided.
“I think in Roanoke it’s going to be a clear Obama win, but out in the country — well, it’s going to be a little tighter,” said Linda Wyatt, a longtime Democratic activist in Roanoke who thinks new arrivals from outside the valley may help Obama surpass John Kerry’s 2004 performance here.
But for Republican John McCain, even a slight tightening of the race in this, his last stronghold in Virginia, could cost him the election. With Obama racking up support in the Washington suburbs and rallying black and labor voters in Hampton Roads, McCain needs the New River Valley and southwest Virginia to hold the line as it has for Republicans in the past.
“In this region there have been the same kind of political changes we have seen nationally that have led to the historic low popularity of President Bush,” said Craig Waggaman, associate professor of political science at Radford University. “The trends here have been the same.”
President Bush won Virginia in 2004 with 54 percent of the vote statewide. In the New River Valley, his finish was even stronger. Bush garnered 62 percent in Floyd and Pulaski counties, 57 percent in Giles County and 54 percent in Montgomery County, which includes Blacksburg, the home of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, aka Virginia Tech.
Nearby, Bush collected 65 percent in Roanoke County and 69 percent in Botetourt County.
A poll released Tuesday by the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College found Obama leading McCain by 48 percent to 39 percent among likely voters in Virginia.
The poll found Obama leading in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, and by smaller margins in Tidewater, Southside and Richmond/Central Virginia. McCain leads in the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia.
Statewide, Obama has picked up support from 16 percent who said they voted for Bush in 2004. McCain has only 6 percent of those who said they supported Democrat John Kerry.
“It will be very difficult for Senator McCain to carry Virginia,” said Harry Wilson, director of the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College.
“Virginia is almost a must-win state for McCain. It is difficult to see a path to electoral victory for McCain if he loses the Old Dominion.”
It’s worth pondering, given that Virginia has voted solidly Republican in presidential races since 1964, how McCain’s fortunes have fallen so far, so fast in what should have been a easy win for him in a bedrock Republican region in a reliably Republican state.
Virginia State Del. Chris Saxman, whose district runs northeast of Roanoke and the New River Valley, said the state “is trending towards Democrats,” but may eventually sour on what he termed the phony centrism of the party’s rising stars.
“Mark Warner and Tim Kaine both ran as centrist Democrats, promising not to raise taxes, and the voters of Virginia trusted them not to do that,” Saxman said. “Here we have Barack Obama who is explicitly saying, ‘I am not going to raise taxes [on middle class wage earners].’ I don’t know how Virginia voters are going to react to — I know they are not going to react as favorably to Barack Obama as they did to Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.”
In 2006, New River Valley voters were still standing with Republicans. In Floyd County, 57 percent supported Republican George Allen for Senate to Democrat Jim Webbs’s 41 percent. Giles Country favored Allen 53 percent to 45 percent for Webb, and Pulaski County was 57 percent for Allen, and 42 percent for Webb.
Only Montgomery County favored Webb 51 percent to 47 percent over Allen. In the end, Webb narrowly won, by 50 percent to 49 percent.
Danny Goad, vice chairman of the Botetourt County Republican Party, said he thinks the region will stick with the Republicans on Tuesday. Among other things, he said the government bailout of the banks and financial industry are making Republican voters in the region uneasy.
“A lot of our legislators seem to have their hands in the till,” Goad said. “Voters don’t like the idea of government bailing out companies, and they think it would be better if those companies worked it out themselves.”
Certainly, the economic turn the campaign has taken has helped Obama in the New River and Roanoke valleys, as it has elsewhere. Voters nationwide have given the Democratic ticket better marks on prospects for improving the economy, which emerged as this year’s prevailing campaign issue.
Waggaman, the Radford University political scientist, said the race could have easily trended for McCain, if a different set of controlling issues had emerged.
“Without intervening events like the current economic crisis, it really could have gone the other way,” Waggaman said. “If you talk to people now who support McCain, and I hear this a lot from my students, they all think he would keep us safer. So anything that would have raised the issue of national security could have brought the race back around his way.”
