Virginia May Spurn GOP in '08

Only 17 percent of independent voters said they want a Republican to win the White House in 2008.

Like independents nationally, independents in Virginia are held together by a rejection of partisan labels, not an overriding shared ideology.

The Post-Kaiser-Harvard survey establishes five types of independents: swing voters who are eager to consider candidates from both major parties, those who reject partisan labels out of anger, those who are dissatisfied or have a mismatched ideological stance, those who act like partisans but call themselves independent, and those who are disengaged from politics.

As will be explored in subsequent articles about the survey, Virginia has a higher concentration of true swing voters than the nation as a whole, and the state is less likely to be home to those who are not interested in politics.

Virginia's independents, 35 percent of whom live in Northern Virginia, have been steadily trending Democratic since the start of the decade, often providing the margin of victory to winning candidates.

According to exit polls, independents helped sweep George Allen (R-Va.) into the U.S. Senate in 2000 by supporting him by a margin of 16 percentage points over Democratic incumbent Charles S. Robb. Four years later, independents went for Bush over U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by 10 percentage points. Bush won the state by eight percentage points.

Last year, however, independents supported antiwar Democrat James Webb for the Senate by a margin of 12 percentage points. Webb defeated Allen by 9,000 votes.

This poll shows that the voter concerns that fueled Webb's victory, notably the Iraq war, are mounting.

Only about a third of Virginia's independents said the war is worth fighting. Fewer than four in 10 said the U.S. goal of stabilizing the country is still possible, and 55 percent said they believe the war on terrorism can succeed without winning in Iraq. The attitudes on all three measures closely match those reflected in a national poll also conducted May 3 to June 3 by the Post-Kaiser-Harvard group.

When asked who better represents their views on Iraq, four in 10 independents said Democrats; three in 10 said Republicans.

In 2004, a narrow majority of the state's voters approved of the decision to go to war; 55 percent approved of how Bush was handling his job at the time. Two years later, when Webb unseated Allen, 53 percent opposed the war, and 45 percent said they thought Bush was doing a good job.

"It's not only the war; it's the whole world situation," said Haroon Ashraf, 51, of Springfield. "I was a Republican since I can remember, and I just recently switched. For the time being, I'm going Democratic, because, at this point, Republicans don't seem capable of being a leader."