Public Policy Polling: Obama strong in Virginia

It’s early, but this is still good news…

Maybe my old home state is regaining it’s sanity….

Now, if only Tom Perriello will run for Jim Webb’s open Senate seat and win, I’ll almost feel safe to cross the border again…

Virginia seems like a state Republicans almost have to win next year if they want to take back the White House but if the voting was today Barack Obama would take it again by a margin comparable to or greater than what he won in 2008.

Obama leads Mitt Romney by 6 points in the state at 48-42. That’s identical to the size of his victory over John McCain in 2008. After that his leads increase to 8 points over Mike Huckabee at 51-43, 12 over Newt Gingrich at 51-39, and a whooping 19 over Sarah Palin at 54-35.

Part of the reason Obama’s doing well in Virginia is that he has respectable, if not great, approval numbers there. 48% like the job he’s doing to 45% who disapprove. There are two keys to his solid standing. The first is that 87% of Democrats stand with him- that’s an indication he’s generally holding onto white voters within his party, even ones who might lean a little bit more to the conservative side of the ideological spectrum.

The other key to his standing is that he’s coming close to breaking even with independents- 48% disapprove of him to 42% who approve. It may seem counter intuitive that negative numbers with those voters are a good sign for Obama, but after two straight election years where independents in Virginia leaned toward the GOP by a margin of about 30 points a Democratic politician getting just slightly negative reviews from them is progress.

via Public Policy Polling: Obama strong in Virginia.