Remember when Virginia was a battleground state? It actually hasn’t been that long since the Commonwealth hadn’t voted blue in a presidential election since LBJ.
Not even purple anymore, the Old Dominion is just short of deep blue these days.
The latest indicator: the double-digit lead leads for Joe Biden and Mark Warner in the marquee races on the ballot in November in the latest statewide poll from the Center for Public Policy at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Biden leads Donald Trump by 14 points (53 percent to 39 percent) and Warner is ahead of Daniel Gade by 17 points (55 percent to 38 percent).
The Democrats are running best where you’d expect: in Northern Virginia (Biden +27, Warner +23) and Tidewater (Biden +23, Warner +39).
The Republicans are doing well in the west (Trump +27, Gade +17) and northwest (Trump +22, Gade +18), but the raw numbers of votes in the more rural areas west of the Blue Ridge aren’t going to be much help.
Whatever room there is for Trump to catch up would seem to come with independents. Biden leads among independents by eight points, with 14 percent of independent voters saying they are undecided.
The independent undecideds would all have to break for Trump to get him in shouting distance, and things don’t work that way, but still, there you go.
The telephone survey of 804 adults living in Virginia was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 7. It has an estimated margin of error of 5.17 percentage points for all adults sampled, and 6.22 percentage points for likely voters.
Full poll results: click here.
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
