Roanoke College has released a new poll of Virginians that shows the presumptive Republican Candidate for US Senate George Allen increasing his lead over Democrat Tim Kaine 45% to 37%.
As always, I look at the numbers behind the polls to see if they pass my “believability” test, or if the results are skewed and need to be “normalized”.
This poll passes with only 1 bit of criticism, sample size.
I am not a fan of polls involving less than 1,000 respondents and this poll interviewed only 607. But to the credit of the Roanoke College, they did a few things that I believe more than make up for a smaller sample size.
One was including cell phones in the sample. 24% of those called were on cells. And they also rotated the order of the candidate names.
And the mix of Republicans (30%), Democrats (28%) and Independents (31%) was pretty good.
My conclusion is that Virginians are beginning to move away from Kaine and towards Allen. In a September 2011 poll, Allen led Kaine 42% to 39% which shows movement away from Kaine and towards Allen.
Interestingly, as voters move towards Allen compared to the Roanoke College September poll, they are moving towards Obama who had 36% compared to Romney’s 44% in September and now stands at 42% to Romney’s 43%.
That runs counter to the argument that if Obama does well in Virginia, Kaine will do well.
This poll indicates that Virginian’s prefer Allen to Kaine – even if more prefer Obama to Romney.
That is really bad news for Tim Kaine who is hoping for strong support for Obama to help him in November.
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