A new NBC News/Marist poll shows Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Timothy M. Kaine with a 9-point lead over Republican rival George Allen and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with a commanding lead over Texas Rep. Ron Paul heading into Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary.
Among likely Virginia primary voters, Romney leads Paul 69 percent to 26 percent.
They are the only two candidates that qualified for the ballot here.
The poll also shows President Barack Obama with a 51 percent approval rating in the state and double digit leads in hypothetical match-ups with all of his potential opponents in the fall.
In the closest race, Obama leads Romney 52 percent to 35 percent. With Gov. Bob McDonnell on the ticket as vice president, Obama’s 17-point lead shrinks by two percentage points.
With only a 2 percent margin of error, Kaine’s 48 percent to 39 percent lead over Allen is the most substantial edge in the contest so far. Nearly every poll for a year has shown the two running neck-and-neck.
Allen pollster John McLaughlin said that the NBC News/Marist poll was flawed, showing a “strong partisan bias in favor of the Democrats.”
McLaughlin noted that while 50 percent of those polled identified themselves as Democratic voters, only 35 percent identified themselves as Republican.
“Historically, we have never seen an electorate that Democratic in Virginia in decades,” he said in a memo. “For example the 2008 post-election polls said the electorate was Democratic 39 percent and Republican 33 percent. We don’t think the Democrats have had an 11 point jump to 50 percent in party affiliation in Virginia since 2008.”
A Roanoke College poll released last week showed Allen with an 8-point lead over Kaine, but used a much smaller sample of voters.
(This has been a breaking news update. Check back for more details as they become available. Read more in tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.)
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement