A Quinnipiac University survey released on Tuesday shows President Obama leading all his potential Republican opponents by wide margins. The poll puts Obama up by his biggest lead in the Old Dominion state by the largest lead of the 2012 election cycle so far.
The poll shows Obama leading his most likely challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, by 8 points with 50 to 42 percent of the vote. 50 percent is the threshold upon which an incumbent is deemed safe.
Obama also leads all other Republican challengers by even wider margins. He leads former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum with 49 to 40 percent and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 45 to 35 percent. Even Rep. Ron Paul trails Obama by 10 points at 49 to 39 percent.
In the race to replace retiring Sen. Jim Webb, former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine leads former governor and Sen. George Allen by 47 to 44 percent – just within the poll’s +/- 3.1 percent margin of error.
Quinnipiac does not make its sample breakdown available in this poll, but the exit polls from 2008 show that turnout in Virginia skewed Democratic by large margins – 39 percent of voters in the Old Dominion identified as Democratic, 33 percent identified as Republican and 27 percent called themselves independent.
In the last statewide election in 2009, when Virginia voters sent Gov. Bob McDonnell to the governor’s mansion, the electorate flipped – 37 percent identified as Republican, 33 percent Democratic and 30 percent independent. Voter turnout in 2009 was, however, less than half that of 2008.
Virginia has only recently become competitive for Democrats and overturned the established political wisdom when Obama won the state in 2008. Before Obama, the last Democrat to win Virginia (along with 48 other states) was President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Virginia has long bucked its fellow Southern states in voting for Republicans on the national level – in 1976, Old Dominion was the only Southern state to vote for President Gerald Ford.
Virginia’s changing demographics showed Democrats that the state was indeed winnable in the 1992 and 1996 elections. President Clinton won 40 percent of the vote in 1992 and 45 percent in 1996 (H. Ross Perot won 14 percent of the vote in Virginia in ’92 and 7 percent in ’96. Nevertheless, President George H. W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole both won the state in those years).
President George W. Bush won the state by convincing margins in 2000 and 2004 with 53 and 54 percent of the vote respectively. But Obama reversed that trend in 2008 by winning the state with 53 percent of the popular vote.
Virginia’s 13 electoral votes are critical to the Obama reelection team’s strategy. Virginia is the centerpiece of their new electoral map – an educated and relatively affluent population dominated by the suburbs around Washington D.C., Obama can afford to lose some of the declining Rust Belt if the new coalition states like Virginia hold.
There is a lot of race left in 2012, but as of today Obama is in a good position in Virginia.
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Follow Noah Rothman @Noah_C_Rothman
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