Poll: McCain And Obama Have Whopping Leads In Virginia

A poll brings good news to Republican Senator John McCain and for Democratic Senator Barack Obama heading into Tuesday’s Virginia primary:

Barack Obama and John McCain may be cruising toward blowout wins in Virginia’s presidential primary Tuesday.

Among the Democrats, the poll conducted for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other Virginia newspapers shows Obama leading Hillary Rodham Clinton 53 percent to 37 percent.

Among the Republicans McCain is up 55 percent to 27 percent, over his remaining major rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. With 5 percent, Texas Rep. Ron Paul is a distant third.

McCain has broad appeal within the GOP, even outpolling Huckabee among religious conservatives — a key voter bloc for Huckabee. McCain leads Huckabee 43 percent to 41 percent among self-described evangelical Christians. The survey shows Obama lifted by massive support among African-Americans. Further, his strength is concentrated in the urban-suburban crescent that spans from outside Washington to Virginia Beach and dominates the state’s politics.

The margin of error is 5 percentage points. The survey was conducted Thursday and Friday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington.

It is based on phone interviews with 800 likely voters — 400 Democrats and 400 Republicans.

The Virginia contest, along with primaries in neighboring Maryland and Washington, could reshape the close and hard-fought Democratic campaign, while underscoring Arizona senator McCain’s status as the presumed Republican nominee.

By all accounts, even with Huckabee’s wins yesterday, McCain is way ahead. But the Democratic race remains deadlocked. Cnn notes:

Though CNN calculations estimate that Huckabee would need to snare hundreds more delegates to catch McCain, the Democrats are in a much tighter race.

With Obama’s wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and the Virgin Islands on Saturday, the Illinois senator took the pledged-delegate lead over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton. But if you count superdelegates, Clinton is still leading the Democratic race, according to CNN calculations.

Clinton has to start winning some big ones, since even with the super-delegates, if she’s losing constantly — and by large margins — some super-delegates could agree with the argument that they need to follow the sentiments expressed by their constituents in the primaries. As it stands now, Obama could win the primaries but lose the nomination due to being out-politicked on super-delegates.