Polling in Virginia

About a month ago we showed Barack Obama's approval down to 48% in Virginia. That was before his numbers started really declining in most national polls and at the time came as quite a surprise given the 52% he received there last November.

Then last week SurveyUSA released its monthly round of state level approval polling, and while they found him down everywhere it was particularly pronounced in Virginia, where he dropped all the way too 44%.

Both our poll and that SurveyUSA poll showed a party identification breakdown for the state of D+1, which I think is reasonable. Two polls don't make a firm conclusion, but is there any reason folks can think of why Obama would be doing worse in Virginia relative to his performance last year than other places?

A separate Virginia poll SUSA put out yesterday showed Bob McDonnell up 15 points on Creigh Deeds, but was criticized because those sampled reported having voted for John McCain by nine points, quite different than Obama's six point victory in the state last fall.

Although I doubt the electorate there this fall will be that Republican leaning, it is worth noting that we have found very little interest in the election from black and young voters who were so pivotal to Democratic success in the state last fall. So I would not be shocked if those who turn out this year split evenly or had some lean toward McCain last year. We're going to ask that on our poll of the state this weekend.

Speaking of which, we pretty much have the poll written but if anybody has interesting question ideas I'm open to them.