The importance of Virginia this election season
“I No Politics” has a pretty good post about the importance of Virginia here. But he fails to touch on many important points and the article is superficial at best.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a correlation between Warner’s advertising and the pro-Obama polling (as the article suggests). The wording is a bit unfortunate. There will be a lot of Warner-McCain voters (as clearly evidenced by the ~60 points Warner seems to be polling vs. the barely 50 points Obama has been able to muster). However like I reasserted many times in the past, Obama might benefit from the Warner coattails. Warner has incredible support in Southern Virginia (more so that Jim Webb and Tim Kaine – as evidenced by their rather razor sharp election margins), and he might make some voters comfortable enough with voting for a Democrat (even if that Democrat is significantly more liberal than Mark Warner).
Virginia is also important because it (along with Nevada) is Obama’s firewall should McCain somehow win Pennsylvania (This is assuming Obama carries all other Kerry states along with Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico – states where Obama has had some very strong numbers of late). Polls in Virginia close at 7 pm, so there’s a good chance we might know the winner of the election by 8-8:30 pm.
And Mark Warner will definitely win the Senate seat (being vacated John Warner – no relation) against former Gov. Jim Gilmore (Mark Warner had previously defeated Jim Gilmore to become the Governor of Virginia). Warner has repeatedly stated he’ll be the founder of a radical centrist coalition. Warner’s strong bipartisan record and his moderate stances on issues will aid greatly in getting things done in the Senate.
