Mitt Romney at a campaign rally in Virginia Beach on September 8. (Photo by Tony Alter)
Mitt Romney’s strong performance in his first debate with President Obama last week has helped him gain ground in Virginia, where both presidential campaigns continue to saturate the airwaves with a seemingly nonstop barrage of advertisements and stump speeches.
In several new polls conducted after last Wednesday’s debate, Romney closed the polling gap between himself and Obama and in some surveys is now in a statistical tie with the president. A Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely voters the day after the debate gave Romney a 49-48 percentage point lead. A Rasmussen survey conducted September 13 gave the opposite result.
Romney enjoyed a bigger swing in polling conducted by We Ask America, which gave Romney a 48-45 edge among 1,200 likely voters. A few weeks earlier, the same survey found Obama was leading Romney of a margin of 49 percent to 46 percent.
Obama maintained a post-debate lead in a survey by Public Policy Polling, which gave the president a 50-47 advantage over his Republican challenger. But that, too, is tighter than the last poll from that firm, in which Obama held a 51-46 lead.
The results of all three polls conducted after the debate fell within their margins of error. Still, a snapshot of Virginia polls taken since September 30 show that one of the most heavily contested states on the electoral map is now effectively a dead heat. Real Clear Politics now gives Obama a 0.3 percent spread in Virginia.
Just a few weeks ago, it seemed that for all their time spent campaigning through Virginia, Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, were losing the fight to return the Old Dominion to the GOP column after going for Obama in 2008, the first time since 1964 the state voted for a Democratic presidential nominee. A poll released by The Washington Post on September 19 gave Obama a commanding eight-point lead.
But the debate seems to have turned things around for Romney in Virginia. Public Policy Polling, which is considered to trend Democratic found that its respondents broke overwhelmingly for Romney in the debate:
Romney’s performance in the debate on Wednesday seems to have helped his image with Virginia voters. They think he won the debate by a 61/28 margin, including 71/17 with independents. Compared to our last poll he’s seen a 10 point gain in his net favorability rating from -2 at 47/49 in mid-September to now +8 at 52/44.
Romney continued to press hard on Virginia’s 13 electoral votes today, when he outlined his foreign policy approach in a speech on the campus of the Virginia Military Institute.
Still, the survey results weren’t all good for Romney. Though he convinced many more voters to take a favorable opinion of him, Romney still lags behind his chief rival. Public Policy Polling found that 56 percent of voters hold Big Bird in high regard.
