Obama's still up in Virginia, but Romney's closing gap

President Barack Obama leads Republican Mitt Romney among likely Virginia voters, according to a new Old Dominion University poll, but the survey – taken in the weeks before and after their first debate – indicates Romney is closing the gap.

The landline and cellphone survey, conducted between Sept. 19 and Oct. 17 by ODU's Social Science Research Center, found that Obama was favored by 50 percent, Romney by 43 percent and three other presidential candidates by a combined 3 percent.

Just over 3 percent of those polled said they were undecided or didn't know. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Poll takers began to see a marked shift toward Romney after the Oct. 3 televised debate in Denver, said Jesse Richman, an assistant professor of political science at ODU who analyzed the poll results.

Of the 465 voters surveyed, about two-thirds were contacted before the debate and supported Obama by a wide margin. But most of the other one-third polled after Oct. 3 favored Romney. The margin of error is larger when splitting apart the poll group, Richman said, but the shift is significant.

"That tells you that the debates matter for people's attitudes," he said Tuesday. "The level of support that Obama had in September began to evaporate as we moved into October."

ODU also found that voters who said their households include active duty or military veterans tended to support Romney in greater numbers than they did Obama.

In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Tim Kaine held a strong lead over Republican George Allen. Kaine, a former governor, was supported by 50 percent of those polled and Allen, a former governor and senator, by 43 percent, with 6 percent undecided.

Regardless of their views on the candidates, the heavy barrage of political advertising by the national campaigns and their supporters is getting mixed reactions from Virginians. Most said they find the ads by both candidates and their supporters to be honest, but one in four said ads were either "not very honest" or "not at all honest."

Richman said the high level of disgust with the ads hurts voting.

"One of the characteristics of this election cycle is an extraordinary degree of public disenchantment with the political parties and the process," he said. "Some people are getting pretty turned off by the whole thing. If you think both candidates are lying to you, how motivated are you to participate?"

While the third-party candidates are clearly not in a position to win the election, the poll shows that their support could influence the outcome in a tight race, Richman said. The other names on the Virginia presidential ballot are Virgil Goode for the Constitution Party, Gary Johnson for the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein for the Green Party.

If the presidential race is close, Richman said, Goode, a former GOP congressman in Virginia, and Johnson, a fiscal conservative, could draw votes away from Romney.

Bill Bartel, 757-446-2398, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com