| VA: Kilgore 48% Kaine 46% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Survey of 500 Likely Voters October 20, 2005
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October 24, 2005--The race to succeed Mark Warner as Governor of Virginia remains too close to call. Republican Jerry Kilgore attracts 48% of the statewide vote while Democrat Tim Kaine earns 46%. Independent candidate Russell Potts is poised to earn just 2% of the vote. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. In the previous Rasmussen Reports election poll, Kilgore also had a two percentage point advantage, 46% to 44%. In late September, the two leading candidates were tied at 45%. This is the second 2005 Virginia election poll with "leaners" included in the totals. Leaners are those who initially do not express a preference for either major party candidate but lean one way or the other when asked a follow-up question. Without leaners, Jerry Kilgore still has a two-point edge, 44% to 42%, over Tim Kaine. Without leaners, Potts is at 4%. [More]
Seventy percent (70%) of the state's conservative voters support Kilgore. Seventy-five percent (75%) of liberal voters support Kaine. Overall, Kilgore is viewed favorably by 54% of Virginia voters and unfavorably by 37%. For Kaine, the numbers are 57% favorable and 34% unfavorable. These numbers highlight a huge difference between the Virginia election and this year's contest in New Jersey. In the New Jersey race, neither candidate is viewed favorably by more than 41% of voters. The economy ranks as the number one issue for 24% of Virginia voters. Twelve percent (12%) say health care is most important and another 12% say education. Eleven percent (11%) name taxes and 10% say Immigration. Seventy-two percent (72%) of Virginia voters Approve of the way that Warner is performing his duties as Governor. Although the state typically leans Republican in national elections, just 48% of Virginia voters Approve of the way President Bush is performing his job. Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information. Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage point of the actual outcome. During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was also the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many as all competitors combined. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
The telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports October 20, 2005. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. 39% of survey respondents were Republican, 35% Democrat, and 26% unaffiliated (see Methodology) |
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