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Obama up 5 in Virginia (Obama 51% Romney 46%)

areafiftyone

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PPP's newest Virginia poll finds Barack Obama leading by 5 points, 51-46. Obama's lead is unchanged from a month ago when we found him leading 50-45 in the state. He may not be seeing a bump from the convention in the state at this point, but he was in a pretty good position to begin with.

Virginia continues to look like it may be something of a firewall state for Obama. PPP has now polled it 9 times this cycle, and President Obama has led by at least 4 points on all 9 of the polls. He's been ahead by 5 points, 5 points, 8 points, and 8 points over the course of the four surveys we've conducted in 2012.

Obama has a slight advantage over Romney (49-47) in terms of who voters trust more on the economy and a wider (51-45) edge over Romney on foreign policy. Only 41% of voters say they approve of how Romney reacted to the situation in Libya this week while 48% express disapproval.

Obama's leading 56-42 with women, 91-7 with African Americans, 63-30 with other non-white voters, and 56-37 with young voters. Romney has a 51-45 advantage with men, a 57-40 one with whites, and a 54-43 lead with seniors. Romney is slightly ahead with independents, 47-45, but Obama's party is more unified with Democrats supporting him 95-4 while Republicans go for Romney by a slightly weaker 92-7 margin.
One thing playing to Democrats' advantage in Virginia is that their voters are actually more excited than Republicans about the election now, contrary to the conventional wisdom for most of this cycle. 73% of Democrats say they're 'very excited' about voting this fall compared to 63% of GOP voters. Women (64%) are more enthusiastic about voting than men (60%), African Americans (85%) are more excited than white voters (57%), and young voters (72%) are more excited than seniors (62%). Republicans can't count on winning back Virginia just by the Obama base staying home because it's still pretty enthusiastic.

There has been a lot of talk about the possibility of Virgil Goode tipping the election to Obama in Virginia but our new poll finds that his support has mostly faded. When third party candidates are included on this poll Obama leads Romney 49-45 with Gary Johnson at 2% and Goode and Jill Stein both at just 1%. Goode's net favorability with Republican voters has dropped a net 15 points in the last month from +3 (19/16) to -12 (14/26), suggesting that many of the party faithful are not happy about the possibility of him having a spoiler effect.

Two other notes:

-Virginians narrowly approve of Obama (50/48) and narrowly have an unfavorable opinion of Romney (47/49).

-By a 50/43 margin voters in the state think Romney should release 12 years of his tax returns.


Continue Reading and Full Poll Results Here:
Obama up 5 in Virginia - Public Policy Polling
 
The notoin of a base election is probably going to hit fewer places harder than Virginia.

The Democratic strong holds, not surprisingly, are your massive population centers in the state. Northern Virginia, Richmond, and parts of Hampton Roads with Northern Virginia being far and away the biggest. The one issue and danger with that is that the lifestyle of Northern Virginianers, to be blatantly obvious, is one that is relatively self-absorbed and increasingly rushed. From my time in Southwest, Eastern, and now Northern Virginia I think that the Republicans will have an easier job of getting the base out to vote with the Democrats having a larger amount of "base" to draw from across the state. What it's going to come down to is whether or not the Democrats can actually get their base to stream out ot the ballot boxes in the high density areas and whether or not the Republicans can squeeze out every drop of support throughout all the rural areas and smaller suburbs around the state.

Prior to Goode getting on the ticket, Virginia was one of those states where I'd say that if Obama was anything less than leading by over 3% going into election that he'd need to at least be slightly worried about it because the nature of the people in the northern virginia area would make them likely for showing up in poll numbers but less likely to show up potentially in the actual voting booth. However, with Goode potentially pulling away votes, and more importantly vocal support, in important areas of the state it could spell trouble for Romney. That will depend, a bit, on what kind of ground game Goode can pull off and how much backlash he gets due to the distaste for Obama in many of the places he'd be popular.
 
PPP's newest Virginia poll finds Barack Obama leading by 5 points, 51-46. Obama's lead is unchanged from a month ago when we found him leading 50-45 in the state. He may not be seeing a bump from the convention in the state at this point, but he was in a pretty good position to begin with.

Oversampling!!!! How dare you call yourself an independent?!!!

[Inside jokes -- thanks for tipping me off to this place A51.]
 
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