A new poll shows that John McCain is now running neck and neck with Barack Obama in Virginia, but McCain’s fellow Republican Jim Gilmore remains far behind Mark Warner in the state’s Senate race.

Despite a heightened presence of both campaigns in the Old Dominion, a swing state with potential to go for a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1964, the poll from SurveyUSA shows Obama and McCain locked in a dead heat. McCain came out 1 point ahead, well within the margin of error.

Similar polls of Virginia voters by SurveyUSA showed Obama with a seven-point edge in May and a two-point lead in June.

“It’s going to be difficult through the fall for any candidate to break beyond that margin of error,” said University of Richmond political science professor Dan Palazzolo.

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By contrast, the same survey on Virginia’s Senate race shows former Gov. Warner, a Democrat, maintaining his outsized lead over Republican Gilmore, his predecessor in the governor’s mansion. Warner was favored by 58 percent of those likely voters polled, to Gilmore’s 34 percent.

The survey was conducted over the weekend for Roanoke’s WDBJ-TV and WJLA-TV in Northern Virginia.

McCain polled better with independent voters, 53 percent of whom said they would vote for the Arizona Republican were the election held that day, compared with 42 percent for Obama. But self-described moderate voters break stronger the other way, with 59 percent for Obama and 37 percent for McCain, who boasts a slightly stronger lead among the party faithful.

Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, reportedly under consideration to be Obama’s running mate, has been campaigning tirelessly for the presumptive Democratic nominee in the state, and political observers also argue that Warner’s presence on the ballot could boost Obama in rural, blue-collar corners of the state.

But many pundits argue that while down-ballot races like Warner’s may go to the Democrats again this year, a large military presence and rural voters will deliver Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to McCain.

“It’s a center-right state, it leans a little more Republican in terms of public opinion,” Palazzolo said. “Obama’s going to have to perform well to win.”

wflook@dcexaminer.com