Given the individuals involved, the open-seat U.S. Senate race in Virginia was bound to be one of the marquee contests of the 2012 election cycle. After all, you are talking about two former Governors of the state, who then went on to other high-profile gigs (one as a Senator, the other as the head of his party's national committee). And with the control of the Senate, in all likelihood, on a knife's edge, a battle between two first-tier contenders was bound to be big.
Now, if the new poll out over the weekend from the Washington Post is accurate, you can add another layer of intrigue to the Virginia Senate race: it's really, really tight.
Abt-SRBI for the Washington Post (4/28-5/4, registered voters, no trendlines)
Tim Kaine (D): 46
George Allen (R): 46
No Opinion: 6Tim Kaine (D): 57
Jamie Radtke (R): 31
No Opinion: 9
(MoE: �3.5%)
While this is the equivalent to a tied game in the first quarter, this will do nothing to dispel the notion that Virginia will be one of the epicenters of the battle for control of the Senate next year.
Looking under the hood, this poll affirms most of what we have come to understand in Virginia politics over the past few years. Kaine cleans house in the parts of NoVa that border Washington DC, but trails markedly once the NoVa vote heads into the exurbs (Allen leads the exurban region, which includes Loudon and Prince William Counties, by 14 points). Kaine, who served as Mayor of Richmond, does a little better in that metro area than Democrats typically would.
Counter to most elections, both men start off the election cycle fairly well liked by the Virginia electorate. Kaine sports a 58/31 approval rating among registered voters, while Allen pulls similar numbers with a 55/25 approval spread. Curiously, both of those numbers represent similar approval numbers from when they left office, but sharp drops in disapproval. Time, indeed, does heal some wounds.
WaPo, just for the hell of it, tested Kaine against teabagging GOP contender Jamie Radtke. If Hell freezes over (Radtke is at 2% in the GOP primary, while Allen is sitting pretty at 57%), Kaine looks like a lock to hold the seat for the Democrats.
Based on primary election polling conducted in this survey, it seems safe to presume that the general will be a Kaine-Allen affair. Allen has a 54-point lead over the nearest Republican (state delegate Bob Marshall, sitting tight at 3% of the vote). Meanwhile, if African-American Congressman Bobby Scott pulls the trigger on a Senate bid, he starts in a considerable hole against Kaine. Kaine leads Scott by a 67-17 margin, according to the poll.
In a potential sign that President Obama will maintain his relative strength in this one-time reliably Republican state at the presidential level, a slight plurality of Senate voters (26% to 21%) say that their Senate vote is an indication of their support for the President, versus an expression of opposition to Obama. Worth a footnote to this story: the poll was in the field during the bin Laden news. The Post analysis, however, notes that the results did not change significantly once the revelation of his death became known.
This diary is brought to you by DK Elections, an official Daily Kos sub-site. Please read our Mission Statement. Our focus is on electoral politics rather than policy. Welcome aboard!
what political party am i unbiased political news economic magazine recent political polls
No comments:
Post a Comment