A new poll released today places the presidential candidates in a dead heat in Virginia.
According to the Rasmussen poll, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain each drew 44 percent of the vote. The results indicates that the battle for the state’s 13 electoral votes will likely grow increasing heated as the November election approaches.
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Obama received resounding support from Democrats in the commonwealth’s Feb. 12, 2008, primary, which he won with a 29-point margin. However, the Rasmussen poll reports that 47 percent of Virginia voters view Obama unfavorably, up three points from May and June, and 31 percent view him very unfavorably.
McCain’s unfavorable rating has remained at 36 percent for the past three months, and just 13 percent of the state’s voters see him as very unfavorable. Six percent of Virginia voters remain undecided.
“The key thing on Obama’s side is that he has to register a lot of voters,” said Robert Roberts, political science professor and analyst at James Madison University. “There’s no way he could take the state based on the number of voters from 2004.”
Obama’s campaign will expand its presence in Virginia this week. The Obama camp announced Thursday that it would open 20 regional offices in nearly every sizable city in the state on Saturday, including southern and southwestern Virginia, where the candidate fared poorly in the primary election.
The McCain campaign is opening four more regional offices in Virginia this week and one more next week, in addition to its regional and national headquarters in Arlington.
This summer, Obama and McCain each have made three campaign stops in the Virginia.
“I think it is a pleasant change to see Virginia contested by both sides, because we have been ignored so often in the past by presidential
candidates,” said Bob Gibson, executive director of the Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.
A Democrat has not won a presidential election in Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. However, two recent elections possibly indicate that Virginia is undergoing a political shift. In Gov. Tim Kaine‘s 2005 election and Sen. Jim Webb‘s in 2006, Democrats won normally conservative exurbs such as Prince William County and Loudon.
