Virginia
Poll Date Sample
Obama Clinton Spread
RCP Average 02/06 - 02/08 -
54.8 37.5 Obama +17.3
SurveyUSA 02/07 - 02/08 588 LV
59 39 Obama +20.0
Mason-Dixon 02/07 - 02/08 400 LV
53 37 Obama +16.0
InsiderAdvantage 02/07 - 02/07 501 LV
52 37 Obama +15.0
Rasmussen 02/06 - 02/07 719 LV
55 37 Obama +18.0
Compared to this data
Washington Post 10/04 - 10/08 504
25 49 Clinton +24.0
Maryland
Poll Date Sample
Obama Clinton Spread
RCP Average 02/06 - 02/08 -
54.0 33.0 Obama +21.0
SurveyUSA 02/07 - 02/08 737 LV
52 33 Obama +19.0
Mason-Dixon 02/07 - 02/08 400 LV
53 35 Obama +18.0
Rasmussen 02/06 - 02/07 925 LV
57 31 Obama +26.0
Compared to this data
The Sun Poll 01/06 - 01/09 455 LV
26 Obama +13.0
Washington Post 10/18 - 10/22 Adults
29 48 Clinton +19.0
This data is consistent and was taken prior to the weekend sweep in Louisiana, Washington, Bebraska, the US Virgin Islands and Maine.
and thei from Politico this morning
Clinton badly needs Virginia victory
Tuesday’s Chesapeake primary seems likely to continue propelling Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in opposite directions.
Obama has hearty leads and distinct demographic advantages in each of the three contests: Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.
With a sweep, he could start to pull away from Clinton in the battle for delegates needed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton – whose campaign is reeling after a high-level staff shakeup and weekend loses to Obama in Maine, Washington State, Nebraska and Louisiana – has all-but-conceded defeat in Maryland and the District.
She has campaigned hard in Virginia, where her campaign has a strategy to keep things competitive, but it’s already looking ahead to March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas as a firewall of sorts.
Obama leads Clinton in Virginia by 53 percent to 37 percent, according to a poll released Sunday by Mason-Dixon.
The survey found his lead in Maryland at 53 percent to 35 percent.
Those states, as well as the District of Columbia, have significant populations of black voters and educated, affluent whites – both top demographics for Obama.
Obama seems to have an advantage in the congressional-district-by-congressional-district dogfights in Maryland and Virginia that will determine who gets most of the 70 and 83 delegates, respectively, up for grabs Tuesday.
Washington, D.C., has 15 delegates in play.
Given Obama's strength in the population centers of D.C. and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs, as well as Baltimore and downstate Virginia cities like Richmond, Newport News, Hampton and Norfolk, he's likely to pick up the lion's share of the congressional districts.
Clinton hopes to keep Obama from rolling up a big-margin victory in Virginia by courting white suburban women, Latinos, federal workers in Northern Virginia and poor, rural whites to the south and to the west – voters who had gravitated to the populist message of John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who dropped out of the Democratic race last month.
Obama will likely be weakest in those poorer rural white parts of the commonwealth – the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia – but there are only two congressional districts, and eight pledged district delegates, to be had in these regions.
Though Clinton hasn’t done much campaigning in southern Virginia (she canceled a campaign appearance in the Roanoke Sunday when windy conditions grounded her plane), former President Bill Clinton made two stops Saturday on her behalf in Southwest Virginia.
Sen. Clinton has actively campaigned in Northern Virginia, where she tailored her message to appeal to demographic groups her campaign believes she can win.
She appeared with Hispanic supporters at a Sunday town hall in Manassas, a middle-class town in the western suburbs of D.C. that has seen an influx of Latino immigrants in recent years.
She singled out Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, a Texas Democrat whose district is nearly 70 percent Latino and who was on hand to support her.
She was introduced – to a mostly white crowd – by Carlos Del Toro, chair of her campaign’s Virginia Hispanic Leadership Council.
He called her “a doer, a fighter, a champion” who “cares about each and every one of you.”
Though exit polls have shown Clinton doing demonstrably better with Hispanic voters than Obama, he’s also courting Virginia’s growing Hispanic population.
On Sunday, his national campaign co-chair, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, introduced him in Spanish at an event in Alexandria, where Obama took questions about the role of South American and African countries in the world.
Clinton has keyed on federal employees, telling the Manassas crowd, “let’s be sure that we start seeing our government employees as the dedicated public servants that they are.”
“I have a very strong base of support among a lot of the electorate who understand how the federal government works,” she told reporters last week.
At an Arlington rally the next day, she praised federal employees.
“A lot of you either work for the federal government or your parents work for the federal government. If you work hard and you’ve seen a lot of people appointed in the last seven years who had no business being appointed, I have this radical, old-fashioned idea: how about appointing qualified people.”
That line got loud applause and resonated with Maryl Kerley, a 61-year-old Falls Church resident.
She stepped down last year as a deputy director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
She said federal workers she knows felt better treated under Bill Clinton’s administration than under George W. Bush’s.
“If she wins the presidency, she will have the heart of the federal employees who work for her,” Kerley said of Clinton, whom she said impressed her as a more capable manager than Obama.
Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly cast Clinton as more of a hands-on leader than Obama, and thinks that message will resonate with federal employees.
But Obama also appears to have been spending more money in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, all places which haven’t played much of a role in past nominating contests because of the relatively late timing of their primaries.
Obama has an extensive phone bank operation in the region and has been advertising for a week, whereas Clinton started more recently.
In addition, Obama has an edge in big-name endorsements in the decisive contest in Virginia.
Besides Kaine, he has the support of Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor. Also on board are veteran congressmen: Rep. James Moran, who represents the D.C. suburbs; Rep. Bobby Scott, an African-American who has a seat stretching from Richmond to Tidewater; and Rep. Rick Boucher, who represents FDR Democrats in the state's hardscrabble coal country in the state’s far southwest.
Obama also has the support of Lisa Collis, the wife of popular former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner – backing that is seen as the closest thing Obama could get from Warner, a 2008 Senate candidate who is neutral in the presidential contest.
"Traditionally, Virginia has been too late," Obama told an overflow crowd of about 1,500, outside his Alexandria rally.
"This time you are right smack dab in the middle," he said to huge cheers.
"I just want to make sure that everyone here understands that we really have a chance to make history," he said.
"The way we have the chance to make the most history is in electing somebody from the bottom up."
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