AP poll shows Obama slightly ahead of McCain in Virginia

By BOB LEWIS

RICHMOND

Virginia, a swing state with a heavy military presence that hasn't backed a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson, is favoring Barack Obama slightly over John McCain, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

Even on national security, an issue that should give former Navy pilot McCain a substantial advantage in a state that's home to the Pentagon in Arlington and the world's largest Navy base in Norfolk, the GOP nominee was only drawing even with Obama in the poll conducted last week.

Overall, the statewide poll showed 49 percent of likely voters supporting Obama to 42 percent for McCain. Two percent were undecided.

Obama benefited from widespread disapproval of President Bush and an electorate deeply worried about the direction of the country and its financial prospects. Seventy-nine percent said the country was heading in the wrong direction, and just 16 percent felt the nation was on the right track.

Obama had a 13-point advantage over McCain on the question of which candidate Virginians trust to improve the economy, and a 17-point advantage over McCain as the candidate Virginia voters trust to understand how the financial crisis affects them.

Virginians also favored Obama by 20 points on the question of who they trust to make the right decisions on health care.

In a state President Bush carried easily in 2000 and 2004, 61 percent of respondents rated his job performance as poor compared with 38 percent who approved.

"I am a Bush-generated Democrat," said respondent Connie Lilly of Richmond, a retired computer programmer who is backing Obama.

"He's been a go-it-alone president who cares nothing for world opinion and cares nothing for the opinion of his own country," she said.

Lilly described McCain's campaign as one of "divisive rhetoric," and said he lost any chance of winning her vote when he added Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket. Lilly, who is pro-choice, considers the anti-abortion Palin unprepared.

"There were so many well-qualified women he could have chosen," Lilly said.

Opposition to abortion and other conservative moral issues, however, endears Palin to McCain's core constituents like poll respondent Shawn Bowe.

"I would never cast a vote for anyone who supports abortion," said Bowe, a 39-year-old Defense Department employee.

Virginians were divided over the Iraq war. Fifty-three percent opposed a fixed timetable for U.S. troops to exit Iraq; 45 percent supported removing all American forces by the summer of 2010.

McCain opposes scheduling a troop withdrawal. Obama promises to remove troops within 16 months of taking office.

Among the other poll results, Congress - under Democratic control the past two years - fared even worse than Bush. Seventy-two percent gave the House and Senate an unsatisfactory job review, while 14 percent approved. Nevertheless, 48 percent said they wanted to see Democrats keep control of Congress to 36 percent who wanted to put the GOP in charge. Fifteen percent either didn't know or didn't care.

In Virginia's Senate race between two former governors, 58 percent supported Democrat Mark R. Warner to 32 percent for Republican Jim Gilmore.

Virginia is one of eight battleground states in the presidential election where the AP-GfK poll was conducted. It involved telephone interviews with 601 likely Virginia voters from Oct. 22-26. Its margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.