Looking good in the Commonwealth

With the usual caveats of it is still early, remember what happened to George Allen, blah, blah, blah, Mark Warner has staked a big lead in the coming Senate election. And I mean seemingly insurmountable big, thirty points ahead big, going to kick the shit out of whoever the opposition is big.

But that only tells half of the story here. My beloved Virginia has not voted for a Democrat in a Presidential election since Johnson in 1964. That, ladies and gentlemen, may very well change. Just how fed up with the GOP are my fellow citizens of the Commonwealth? Pretty damn fed up indeed.

The Senate race will unfold against the backdrop of next year's presidential campaign, and the poll suggests that the state's 13 electoral votes could be up for grabs. By a margin of 11 percentage points, Virginians would prefer that the next president be a Democrat, indicating that even a reliably red state could flip in 2008.

Eleven points on the generic ballot – wow.