If Obama is doing so well among white voters in Virginia, why isn’t he leading in the polls? The polls showing Obama leading by 7 or 8 points tend to show Obama faring extremely well with African Americans, while the closer polls either show diminished black support for Obama or assume that African Americans represent a smaller share of the electorate. For instance, while the recent Quinnipiac and Washington Post polls both show Obama with 37 percent of the white vote, Obama has a staggering 97 percent of the African American vote in the Washington Post poll, but just 82 percent in the Quinnipiac poll. African Americans made up just 17 percent of the Virginia electorate in the Quinnipiac poll, compared to 20 percent in 2008. As a result, Obama holds 51 percent of the vote in the Washington Post poll compared to just 47 percent in Quinnipiac. Either way, the Romney campaign would probably prefer that their chances weren’t dependent on meaningful declines in African American turnout and support for the President.

Population growth and subtle changes in the composition of the Democratic coalition pushed Virginia toward Democrats over the last decade. But Virginia’s well documented lurch toward the Democrats actually fell slightly short: Obama won Virginia by 6.2 percent in 2008, making it slightly more Republican than the nation as a whole. While the traditionally Republican state might be expected to tilt toward Romney, Virginia may be poised to tilt Democratic for the first time in 64 years, provided that the election stays close nationally. Here's the simple formulation: If Virginia whites only offer slightly less support for the President than the rest of the country, then the state's much larger African American population and smaller white population are sure to nudge the state to the left of the national mean. Without Virginia's electoral votes, Romney's path to the Presidency gets narrow. So long as Romney struggles to make gains among college educated whites and minorities, his campaign team might be wise to consider alternative paths to 270.

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