Posted on 11/01/2008 10:32:48 PM PDT by Chet 99
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier Published: November 2, 2008
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama maintains a small lead over Republican candidate John McCain in Virginia, an unusually high percentage of undecided voters is likely to determine the outcome in Virginia, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll.
“Usually you expect the undecided vote to be down around 5 percent going into the final weekend,” said J. Bradford Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. “But here we’ve got 9 percent, which is large for a presidential race and the fact that it’s overwhelmingly white voters is interesting.”
Commissioned by several news organizations including the Herald Courier, the poll shows that 47 percent of likely voters statewide currently support Obama and 44 percent support McCain. However, 9 percent of those polled remain undecided – which Coker said is not unprecedented.
“The closest level of undecided voters in any major Virginia election is 8 percent in the 1989, Doug Wilder-Marshall Coleman governor’s race, which notably involved the first African-American candidate to seriously contest for that office,” Coker wrote in his analysis of the poll results.
Coker’s firm interviewed 645 registered voters statewide Wednesday and Thursday. The margin of error for the poll is 4 percentage points.
The firm also released a report Saturday on candidate favorability ratings in eight battleground states, which include Virginia. Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania join Virginia in leaning toward Obama. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio are leaning toward McCain. In none of those states, however, does the leading candidate beat the poll’s 4-point margin of error. Pennsylvania joins Virginia with 9 percent undecided voters, which is the highest number of undecideds among those battleground states.
In a telephone interview Saturday, Coker said: “What’s gonna be interesting is if this undecided vote breaks conventionally and splits, or if it all goes one way to Obama or McCain.”
Of undecided voters in Virginia, the poll reveals 93 percent are white and 75 percent do not live in Northern Virginia.
In Virginia’s 1989 gubernatorial race, Coker said, 96 percent of the undecided voters were white, and on Election Day the undecided whites “broke almost all in favor of [the white candidate] Coleman.” “It will be interesting to see if 20 years is going to change things,” he said.
Also in his poll analysis, Coker mentions “the Bradley Effect,” which refers to the 1982 California governor’s race, and is “defined as the tendency of white voters to tell pollsters they were “undecided” rather than admit they were voting against the black candidate.”
The poll, which Coker began in September, shows Obama’s favorable ratings rising steadily from 44 percent to 47 percent, while McCain’s have fallen from 47 percent in early September to 44 percent in November.
ahunter@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531
I just want Wens to get here, so we can start making him as miserable as he made GWB.
Paybacks will be a bitch.
True. But that poll was taken 10/25-10/26. I think Hussein is definitely under 50% now.
Obama has proven that he, like most Chicago politicians, is a thug. He and his supporters have little tolerance for those who oppose him on the campaign trail. He would govern the same way as president, and how dare we dissent. They will make us much more miserable from the inside than we can ever hope to make them from the outside as we watch them methodically chop our freedoms up piece by piece.
We are heading for uncharted waters if Obama gets in. The extreme left will be in complete control and they’ll be damned if they ever give it up. There will be change alright, and as the Hillbuzz blog put it best, I “don’t believe America would ever be the same again.” They’re right; it wouldn’t.
SurveyUSA’s last poll of VA in 2004 had Bush up by only 4.
One lesson I am going to draw from this election: when a poll reports that Candidate X “leads” Candidate Y by 47-45 in some state, I am going to remember that Candidate X isn’t necessarily leading at all. You still have to find out who the remaining undecided voters are and which way you think they are going to break in the end.
Mason-Dixon, sometimes. SurveyUSA, never.
Mason-Dixon seems to know there stuff when it comes to Southern states.
Reading between the lines, it sure looks like McCain has VA based on these numbers.
bttt
Errrr... their stuff. Wish there was an edit key.
PA??? Are you serious???
We’ll win VA, OH, FL, NV, and PA but lose CO, IA, and NM. 286-252. We’ll also lose the PV.
RutRoh Scooby! :) Obama is screwed!
If ya'all talking Mason-Dixon Southern, its "thar stuff".
Without Virginia, Obama needs a sweep of IA, NM, NV and CO to win. That is with him holding PA and NH. Frankly, I think NH is belong to us.
Without Virginia and Colorado, Obama has no chance period.
I can’t wait to hand out f-bombs to all the trolls and pantywaist beltway milquetoast republicans.
I am so excited to witness the absolute meltdown of the KOSsacks and DUmmies.
If I lived in Chicago, I would make sure my homeowners and auto insurance premiums were up to date, because there will be a lot of property damage.
Welcome to Free Republic.
Could you take the time to explain how you found us and why you are not only reading here, but posting? I think it would be instructive to those who don’t really believe the huge groundswell of Democrats for McCain/against zerO. (I can rarely even pronounce or write his name. It just sticks in my throat.)
For me, I was part of the radical left back in the 60s/70s. My husband and I experienced the thuggery and fascism up close and personal so long ago, we can barely remember how it felt to be on the left. But we have never forgotten the attempts to control us and destroy the country we love. zerO is the SDS candidate and his wing of the Democrat Party is the Weather Underground.
I am happy to see so many Democrats waking up to what has happened. It did not happen overnight. It began 40 years ago.
For whatever reason, Ras is full of macaca this time around. I don't trust any of his polls: even today, his new weighting is more than 6% DEM oversampled.
BTW, watch IN. Its polls close first, and if the election is close at all, it will get a lot of attention. If they just go, 'ho hum, Republican IN for McCain,' then it will look very, very good for us.
I have troubles with my there and their also.. :)
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