Forty-four percent of voters sureyed say Warner deserves reelection this year. Poll: Warner leads Gillespie by 6

A Republican poll conducted last week found Democratic Sen. Mark Warner leading GOP challenger Ed Gillespie by just 6 points, 44 percent to 38 percent, among likely voters in Virginia.

The automated survey, conducted by the Republican firm Harper Polling for the center-right American Action Network and shared exclusively with POLITICO, also found that a generic Republican would beat a generic Democrat by four points among likely voters in the Commonwealth, 46 percent to 42 percent.


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Warner, a freshman senator who was previously governor, is working hard to reassert his bipartisan bona fides. The poll found that Warner is viewed favorably by 47 percent and unfavorably by 33 percent of those surveyed. He leads by 4 points among independents.

Previous public polls that focused on registered voters gave Warner dramatically larger leads. A poll published Jan. 23 by Christopher Newport University showed him leading by 20 points, and Roanoke College put him ahead 29 points earlier in January.

Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who entered the race on Jan. 16, remains mostly unknown. He’s viewed favorably by 15 percent and unfavorably by 23 percent in this new poll, but 62 percent still don’t know enough to offer an opinion.

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Asked if they believe “Warner has done enough to deserve reelection,” 44 percent said yes and 40 percent said someone else should get a chance.

Asked about the numbers Tuesday, a Warner spokesman referred to a statement from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last week about a separate batch of polls that called Harper “a notoriously right wing pollster.”

“Generously referred to as a polling firm, Harper Polling should never be taken seriously,” the DSCC said.

A slight majority of the Virginia sample, 52 percent, viewed “the health care law known as Obamacare” unfavorably. Thirty-seven percent see it favorably. The horse race questions were tacked onto a larger health care survey.

Harper polled 936 likely voters from Feb. 4-5. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percent.