Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th, is tied with his most prominent Republican opponent, but the contest could change dramatically if former Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. enters the contest, according to a new survey.
Perriello, who defeated Goode in November 2008, is tied at 44 percent with Sen. Robert Hurt, R-Pittsylvania, one of a half-dozen candidates for the Republican nomination.
If Goode runs as an independent, he and Perriello tie at 41 percent, with Hurt getting only 12 percent, according to the survey.
Public Policy Polling surveyed 924 registered voters in Virginia's 5th Congressional District from Friday through Wednesday. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
Perriello won the district, which stretches from Charlottesville south to the North Carolina line, by just 727 votes in a year in which Barack Obama drove a surge of Democratic voters to the polls. The turnout in a midyear election likely will be much smaller.
The survey found that "voters are pretty divided on Perriello's performance so far with 42% expressing approval of him to 46% who disapprove," according to Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling.
"Hurt is pretty much a blank slate to voters in the district with 70% having no opinion of him," Jensen said.
But "that makes Hurt the 'name' Republican compared to the others running," Jensen said.
Perriello leads the lesser-known Republicans by margins ranging from 4 to 10 percentage points.
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