| VA: Kilgore 46% Kaine 44% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Survey of 500 Likely Voters October 10-11, 2005
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October 12, 2005--The televised debate is over and the race to replace Mark Warner as Virginia Governor remains too close to call. Republican Jerry Kilgore attracts 46% of the statewide vote while Democrat Tim Kaine earns 44%. Two weeks ago, the two leading candidates were tied at 45%. Jerry Kilgore has been at 45% or 46% in four of the six Rasmussen Reports Virginia election polls this year. Once, he was above that at 47% and once below that at 43%. Kaine's support was at 39% to 41% in the first four Rasmussen Reports Virginia election polls. His numbers have improved a bit for the two most recent election polls. Independent candidate Russell Potts attracts just one percent (1%) of the statewide vote. Just 53% of Virginia's Likely Voters have read, seen, or heard any news stories about Sunday night's televised debate. A plurality of those had watched little or none of the debate as it was televised. [More]
Among those who had heard about the debate, 40% thought Kaine won while 34% thought Kilgore did a better job. Seventy-six percent (76%) of Kaine supporters thought their man won. Seventy-three (73%) of Kilgore supporters thought the same about their candidate. Just 11% of all voters consider the debate very important in terms of impacting their vote. Since the election is drawing closer, Rasmussen Reports made a slight change in the methodology for this survey compared to earlier Virginia election polls. The methodological change had little impact on the relative support for Kilgore and Kaine, but it sharply diminished support for Russell Potts. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of those who initially said they would vote for Potts answered a follow-up question indicating they would vote for either Kilgore or Kaine. Seventy-one percent (71%) 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 50% of Virginia voters Approve of the way President Bush is performing his job. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Virginia voters have a favorable opinion of Kilgore. Fifty-six percent (56%) say the same about Kaine. Potts is viewed favorably by 28%. 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 10-11, 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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