2009 Election, Bob McDonnell, Creigh Deeds

McDonnell has double-digit lead in Va. governor’s race

Republican Robert F. McDonnell carries a double-digit lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds into the final week of the campaign for Virginia governor, according to a new Washington Post poll.

The Republican, briefly buffeted in the polls by voters’ initial reaction to the publication of his 1989 graduate school thesis, has rebounded to big advantages on the top issues, particularly taxes, and is now seen as the more effective leader, more honest and more empathetic.

McDonnell is also buoyed by support outside of Northern Virginia, where he is currently outperforming all other top-of-the-ticket Republican candidates this decade. Statewide, McDonnell now leads Deeds among likely voters by a 55 to 44 percent margin. McDonnell, who narrowly defeated Deeds in the race for attorney general four years ago, has been above 50 percent in all four Post polls in the campaign.

About three in 10 Virginia voters say their vote will be based in part on their perceptions of President Obama, who is scheduled to campaign in Norfolk with Deeds Tuesday. But as many say they will be motivated by their desire to express support for the president as to voice opposition to him, partial evidence that Obama himself may not be able to decisively sway the race.

Seven in 10 say the president — who remains relatively popular with an approval rating of 54 percent among likely voters and 57 percent among all those registered to vote — won’t be a factor in their vote one way or the other. These findings suggest that the Virginia race may not be the early referendum on the Obama presidency that it is often held up to be.

“Sometimes people talk about sending a message — with Virginia being in this odd off-year election cycle,” said Keith Fredlake, 32, of Gainesville, a McDonnell supporter. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think Obama’s really put a lot of stock into Virginia, and I don’t think it will hurt or help.”

The poll shows that Deeds has been unable to shift the dynamics of a race that in recent weeks appeared to be slipping away from him. Despite a concerted effort to reverse a widespread voter perception that his campaign has been largely negative, more than six in 10 in the new poll see the Democrat as running a mainly negative effort. By contrast, most see McDonnell’s campaign as a predominantly positive one.

Deeds has also been unable to excite his supporters and close the dramatic enthusiasm gap McDonnell has held from the outset. About a quarter of Deeds’s voters say they are supporting him “not too” or “not at all” enthusiastically. More than nine in 10 of those who back McDonnell are “very” or “fairly” enthusiastic about the Republican.

The results also suggest that Deeds, a moderate who has alternately praised and distanced himself from Obama, has neither energized the president’s most fervent supporters nor won over his skeptics.

McDonnell is now in a position of significant strength with widening advantages on central issues as the campaign enters its final days.

McDonnell holds double-digit advantages when it comes to dealing with the economy (plus 17 percentage points), transportation (16 points), taxes (25 points) and has overtaken Deeds as the one more trusted to handle issues of special concern to women (7 points). On taxes, which has been a focal point of the campaign in recent weeks, McDonnell has stretched his lead significantly, and now holds a better than 2 to 1 lead over Deeds among independent voters.

Deeds has said he would be willing to sign a tax increase to pay for road improvements if approved by a bipartisan majority in the General Assembly, a prospect opposed by 55 percent of likely voters, including a growing number outside of Northern Virginia. McDonnell and the Republican Governors Association have spent millions on what now appears to have been a devastating ad campaign about Deeds’s stance– and over his failure to clearly explain his position on the issue while answering questions from reporters following a debate in Fairfax in September.

“I do think we need someone new in there who won’t continually raise taxes,” said Richmond resident Janice Baldwin, 57, who is voting for McDonnell. “Taxes eat us out of house and home. Every time you turn around, if you’re not taxed for one thing , you’re taxed for another.”

Overall, most voters see McDonnell as “about right” ideologically, while nearly half now see Deeds as “too liberal.”

McDonnell now holds big leads as the one who would be a more effective leader (21 percentage point advantage), the more honest and trustworthy (+14) and the more in-tune with people’s problems (+11). On all three of these attributes, the candidates were about even in mid-September.

In bottom-line vote preference, independents now favor McDonnell, 61 to 36 percent, and women who consider themselves political independents are solidly behind the Republican. Independent women, who split about evenly between the two candidates in the weeks after the publication of McDonnell’s master’s thesis, now favor McDonnell 57 to 40 percent.

McDonnell also has successfully scrambled voting allegiances, winning nearly a quarter of those who voted for Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine four years ago, while holding onto almost all of those who say they opted for Republican Jerry Kilgore.

For Deeds, one potential way to stage a come-back in the race’s final week lies in changing the makeup of the probable electorate by convincing core Democratic constituencies to vote. Voters who backed Obama in 2008 are significantly less apt to say they will participate this time around than are those who supported his Republican challenger, Ariz. Sen. John S. McCain.

Obama’s visit to Norfolk Tuesday illustrates the challenge: Just 49 percent of voters in the southeastern part of the state who supported Obama last year say they are certain to vote next week, compared with 73 percent of those who backed McCain. But two-thirds of all registered voters in the southeast approve of the way the president is handling his job.

Deeds has made a late effort to reach out to Obama voters in Northern Virginia, including a weekend swing through the region’s most Democratic leaning communities a week ago and visits to retirement communities in Fairfax County Monday. Democratic organizers last week sent an e-mail signed by the president to his supporters in the state urging them to back Deeds. That combined outreach may have helped in recent weeks, giving some hope to Democrats that Obama’s rally could do the same in the Tidewater region. In early October, just half of Northern Virginia Obama voters were likely to vote; now more than seven in 10 are apt to turnout next week.

That shift has contributed to an improvement for Deeds in the critical Northern Virginia region, where he now holds a 56 to 43 percent lead in the left-leaning Washington suburbs. However, that lead is swamped by significant and growing deficits in every other region of the state.

McDonnell appears to be in a particularly dominant position in the state’s rural west, an area the Democrat had labeled “Deeds Country” because it includes his Bath County home. Though Deeds has devoted considerable resources to the region, he now trails there by 63 to 36 percent.

Obama’s approval rating is at its low point in this part of the state — 46 percent of registered voters in the western areas give him positive marks — where opposition to the proposed changes to the nation’s health care system peaks at 58 percent.

Statewide, 53 percent oppose the current efforts at health care reform, while 43 percent are supportive.

For more than 30 years, Virginia voters have selected a governor from the opposite party as the sitting president, but most of the state’s voters say that is not an intentional choice: 71 percent say it does not make a difference to the state whether the governor’s party affiliation matches up with the president’s, with the rest about evenly split about whether it is better or worse for the state to have the two be of different political parties.

The poll was conducted Oct. 22 to 25 by conventional and cellular telephone among a random sample of 2,132 adults in Virginia, including 1,206 likely to vote in the Nov. 3 gubernatorial election. The results among likely voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

-Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and Washington Post Staff Writer Anita Kumar contributed to this story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102602414_pf.html