Biden holds 12-point advantage with Va. voters

With less than a week until the election, Democratic presidential challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead incumbent President Donald Trump by 12 points in Virginia, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.

“Biden’s lead continues to illustrate Virginia’s solid shift left in presidential and statewide races,” Wason Center Research Director Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo said in a statement. “The test on Election Day will be whether that shift holds in the competitive congressional districts that went to Democrats in 2018.”

Biden has a lead over Trump with Black voters (90%-9%), women (60%-38%), college-educated voters (60%-35%) and voters over the age of 45 (54%-42%). Men are split (46% for Biden and 45% for Trump) and non-college-educated voters show a slight preference for Trump (48%-46%).

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, the Democratic incumbent, is also ahead of Republican opponent Daniel Gade by 20 points among likely Virginia voters at 57% to 37%. This is a 7-point increase from the previous Wason Center poll released in mid-September that showed Warner with gains among men, white voters, older voters and non-college-educated voters. 

Virginia voters continue to show bipartisan support for a state constitutional amendment that would create a commission to draw boundaries for Virginia’s 11 U.S. Congressional districts, 40 state Senate districts and 100 House of Delegates districts. 

Voters were also polled about policy issues. Nearly one-third said the COVID-19 pandemic is the most important followed by the economy (21%), health care (13%), racial inequality (11%) and climate change (6%).

“Voters have COVID-19 on their minds as they vote, which is not good news for President Trump,” Wason Center Academic Director Quentin Kidd said in a statement.

Poll results are based on 908 interviews of registered Virginia voters on landline and cell phones, conducted from Oct. 15 through Sept. 27. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.4% at the 95% level of confidence, which means that if 50% of respondents indicate a topline view on an issue, the surveyors were 95% confident that the population’s view on that issue is somewhere between 46.4% and 53.6%. Live calling was conducted by trained interviewers with the Wason Center for Public Policy Survey Research Lab.

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