Candidates stay close

The presidential contest in Virginia is heading toward a photo finish.

The final Richmond Times-Dispatch Poll of the campaign shows Sen. Barack Obama at 47 percent and Sen. John McCain at 44 percent. Nine percent are undecided — an unusually large slice of the electorate. The profile of undecided voters suggests that some are potentially opposed to Obama.

Because Obama’s advantage over McCain is within the poll’s margin of error — plus or minus 4 percentage points — the contest in Virginia can be considered about even.

The battle for Virginia’s 13 electoral votes is raging in the countdown hours to the election — a dramatic contrast with the state’s long history as a Republican stronghold.

The candidates and their stand-ins are swarming across Virginia, attempting to pump up votes in friendly turf and hold down margins in inhospitable territory.

McCain stopped Saturday in Newport News and in Fairfax County and is to appear Monday at an airport rally just over the state line in Tennessee in a visit targeting Southwest Virginia.

McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, was scheduled to appear in western Henrico County late last night.

Obama returns to Virginia Monday for a rally in Manassas, in the increasingly Democratic outer suburbs of Washington.

Northern Virginia, where Obama began and closes his general-election campaign, is the bulwark of his strength in Virginia, according to The Times-Dispatch Poll. Obama also leads in Hampton Roads, a defense-rich region with a large black vote.

McCain is favored in Virginia’s rural west and south as well as its conservative heartland — the Richmond metropolitan area.

Obama has solid support among Democrats, blacks, women and voters between the ages of 18 and 49. Nearly four in 10 whites are backing him, as are 10 percent of self-identified Republicans.

Still, McCain is favored by eight in 10 Republicans. About half of voters ages 50 and older prefer him. McCain also is supported by 53 percent of whites and is pulling roughly half of male voters.

Nearly 60 percent of veterans prefer McCain, who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Virginia is home to more than 800,000 veterans, putting it second to California.

The Times-Dispatch Poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research of Washington. It is based on phone interviews with 625 registered voters who said they are likely to cast ballots.

The latest poll affirms Virginia’s status as a toss-up. Three previous surveys by The Times-Dispatch — one in September; two last month — put the McCain-Obama contest within the margin of error.

The final poll shows that the share of undecided voters is considerably larger than in previous presidential elections. In 2004, only 5 percent of Virginians were undecided in The Times-Dispatch’s closing poll. In 2000, the figure was 6 percent.

This year’s percentage recalls that of a historic contest — the 1989 campaign for governor between Democrat L. Douglas Wilder and Republican J. Marshall Coleman.

Wilder narrowly won, becoming the nation’s first elected black governor.

Among undecided voters this year, 93 percent are white and 75 percent live outside Northern Virginia, where Obama has a substantial lead.

Political analysts are predicting some leakage in votes for Obama because of race, but they hesitate to assign a percentage to it because of difficulty in measuring racial attitudes in public-opinion polls.

If elected, Obama would become the nation’s first black president.

The poll also showed that the presidential candidates and their running mates for vice president are viewed equally favorably.

McCain, a senator from Arizona, and Obama, a senator from Illinois, have 49 percent favorable ratings.

Palin, the governor of Alaska, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the Democratic nominee for the No. 2 spot, have 44 percent and 43 percent favorable ratings, respectively.

Jeff E. Schapiro is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.