Poll: McDonnell’s lead healthy

Republican Bob McDonnell holds a comfortable lead for governor over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, lifted by strong support in GOP-leaning regions of Virginia and growing appeal among independents, who in recent years have preferred Democrats, a new poll shows.

McDonnell is favored by 48 percent and Deeds by 40 percent in the poll conducted Tuesday to Thursday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. Twelve percent are undecided.

McDonnell is ahead in the Shenandoah/Piedmont region, which includes the Charlottesville area, as well as in the Southwest and Southside areas, three regions where Deeds, a state senator from remote Bath County, hoped to cut into the Republican advantage among rural voters.

McDonnell is preferred by 60 percent, compared with 28 percent for Deeds in the Shenandoah/Piedmont region, with 12 percent undecided, according to the survey. McDonnell is also ahead in the Richmond area.

Deeds leads in Northern Virginia, anchor of the Democratic Party, and has a statistically insignificant advantage over McDonnell in Hampton Roads, which includes Virginia Beach, McDonnell’s political base before his election as attorney general in 2005.

The poll suggests that McDonnell is heading into the final three weeks of the race largely unscathed from Deeds’ continuing focus on McDonnell’s controversial 1989 law-school thesis.

Further, the poll depicts an electorate, perhaps because of continuing economic anxiety and contentious policy debates in Washington and Richmond, cooling to the dominant Democratic establishment. For example, independents — key to a Democratic ascendancy that began in 2001 — prefer McDonnell to Deeds, 47 percent to 33 percent.

McDonnell’s thesis, shown by other public polls to be of limited consequence, is sharply critical of working women, unmarried couples, contraception and gays. McDonnell has disavowed some positions, including his claim that women who work outside the home are a detriment to family.

In the survey, McDonnell trails Deeds among women, an important constituency for Democrats, by 5 percentage points, 40 percent to 45 percent, with 15 percent undecided. Men overwhelmingly favor McDonnell over Deeds, 56 percent to 35 percent, reflecting a traditional gender preference for Republicans. Nine percent of the men polled were undecided.

A measure of voter distaste this year for Democrats may be the declining job-performance score of departing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat. Statewide, it has fallen to 48 percent rating him excellent or good, from 54 percent a year ago.

In the Shenan-doah/Piedmont region, 36 percent gave Kaine a rating of excellent or good, while 62 percent rated the governor’s performance as fair or poor, with 2 percent undecided.

Elected in 2005, in part on the popularity of Gov. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat now in the U.S. Senate, Kaine has been criticized by Republicans for putting his duties as chairman of the Democratic National Committee ahead of his obligations as governor, which include balancing the state’s recession-wracked budget.

Though the election is a rematch — McDonnell narrowly defeated Deeds for attorney general four years ago — the current contest is unfolding under different conditions.

At this point in 2005, McDonnell’s lead over Deeds was identical to his current advantage, 8 percentage points.

But now McDonnell’s favorable name recognition, at 45 percent, is nearly twice what it was in his statewide debut in 2005. Also, Deeds’ unfavorable name recognition, apparently because of his attack advertisements, is 7 percentage points higher than McDonnell’s.

Mason-Dixon Polling & Research interviewed by telephone 625 registered voters (95 in the Shenandoah/Piedmont region), all of whom said they are likely to cast ballots Nov. 3. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The sample of respondents, intended as a reflection of the electorate as a whole, was divided almost equally between men and women. Whites accounted for 83 percent; blacks, 15 percent; and other racial groups, 2 percent.