Today Rasmussen Reports has some new numbers out from the commonwealth of Virginia:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters finds Obama with a statistically insignificant one-percentage point lead over McCain, 45% to 44%. Five percent (5%) favor a third-party candidate, and 7% are undecided. Last month, with Hillary Clinton still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, McCain led Obama 47% to 44%. (See Video)

This marks the fourth time in five polls that the two candidates have been within five points of each other in Virginia, confirming the state's competitive status. The one exception came in March, at the height of the initial Jeremiah Wright coverage, when McCain was up by eleven points.

With this new polling in the mix, the Pollster.com trend projection for Virginia shows about as close to a tossup as they come, with John McCain sitting at 44.6 percent support and Barack Obama at 44.1 percent. The Real Clear Politics pure average of recent polling shows an actual tie, with both candidates securing 43.3 percent support. And at present, Nate Silver gives Obama a slightly better than not chance of winning (57.4 percent).

Now that Virginia, which no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has carried, is in the "tossup" category, and even states like Kansas (which I will write about in the morning) and Nebraska (at least a couple congressional districts -- and thus EVs -- in the state) and North Carolina are being talked about, the near obsessive focus on the race in Florida (and even in Ohio, to an extent) seems a bit dated, mired in a mindset that seemingly made more sense four and eight years ago than it does today.

I've noted several times in the past that Virginia is looking more and more like a swing state, with the Democrats winning the last two gubernatorial races, on pace to win a second Senate election in a row, winning control of the state Senate, and, at least according to polling, Barack Obama running within the margin of error of John McCain in the commonwealth. Apparently, the McCain campaign agrees that Virginia is now a swing state:

Aides to McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, and to Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, say they will invest heavily in winning Virginia, which could set the stage for a barrage of television ads, voter registration drives and campaign visits by the candidates.

"I think it is a battleground state," said Rick Davis, McCain's national campaign manager. "I know they are targeting it, and we are certainly targeting it."

The problem for McCain here is manifold. To begin, Virginia is not a cheap place to run an election campaign, with statewide advertising costing at least $1 million per week. Even considering that the Republican National Committee has more than a 9-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over the Democratic National Committee at this juncture, money that could be put towards defending Virginia -- a state that the Democrats have only carried once in the last 60 years -- there is no assurance that the RNC will have as large of an advantage, if any, over the DNC come the fall to bail McCain out. And as a result of this, along with the fact that Obama will likely have significantly more money to spend on a general election than will McCain, it would hurt the Republicans greatly to have to spend millions and millions of dollars in Virginia.

The problem here is compounded by the fact that there is little evidence that McCain can put states in play that have not been in play in the past. While it would appear that Obama will have to spend to defend states like Pennsylvania and Michigan (though he currently holds leads in both states), the Democrats have had to spend serious dollars and time in Pennsylvania and Michigan in the past. In other words, while Obama may spend more in these states than did John Kerry or Al Gore, these are states that the Democrats traditionally focus serious resources in, so Obama would not necessarily be abnormally stretching himself to play in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Likewise, although polling indicates that Ohio and particularly Florida could be difficult for Obama to win -- they would cost him -- Florida and Ohio have been costly for many Democrats in years past. Again, Obama is not stretched particularly thin in either of these cases.

So while Obama stretches the money-deprived McCain campaign by putting states like Virginia and Colorado -- and even a couple of electoral votes in Nebraska -- into play, the same cannot be said for McCain with regards to the Obama campaign. When you combine this with a money disparity that won't be able to be made up by the RNC -- perhaps not at all if the Democratic nominee is able to turn his or her fundraising prowess to helping the DNC bring in cash quickly and in large amounts (remember, the DNC became flush with cash in the months after Kerry secured the nomination, so it's by no means out of the question that this would happen) -- you have a real potential for a headache for the McCain campaign and the Republicans.

Quinnipiac has released numbers out of Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio pitting John McCain up against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. According to the surveys, Clinton performs better in these traditional swing states than does Obama, leading McCain outside the margin of error in each state while Obama holds a statistically significant lead in just one (Pennsylvania) and trails within the margin of error in the other too.

But what, exactly, is a swing state? Just the states that in the last couple of elections were close between the Democrats or states that would in the event of a McCain-Obama general election match up would likely be close?

Take for instance Colorado, where John Kerry improved on Al Gore's 42 percent in 2000 by pulling in 47 percent of the vote in 2004. Obama has held an average of a 4-point lead in the state over McCain in Rasmussen Reports surveys this year, and led by 9 points in a SurveyUSA poll as well.

Or look at Virginia. Though no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has carried the state in a presidential election, Gore lost it by 7 points in 2000 and Kerry lost it by 8 points in 2004. And this year, polling decidedly shows the commonwealth to be on the map in the event of a McCain-Obama race. A week and a half ago I noted Rasmussen polling putting McCain up in Virginia, though well within the margin of error. Today, SUSA puts Obama in the lead by an even larger margin (though still not a statistically significant one):

SurveyUSA for WDBJ and WJLA, 600 RVs, 5/16-18, MoE +/- 4.1%

John McCain (R): 42 percent
Barack Obama (D): 49 percent

Does this poll mean that Obama is destined to carry Virginia in a general election? No. But does it mean that Obama can make a race out of it in Virginia? No doubt. And putting 13 electoral votes in play is nothing to sneeze at. What's more, with the trend in the commonwealth fairly clear -- Democrats winning gubernatorial contests in 2001 and 2005, a Senate election in 2006 (and another likely in 2008), and the state Senate in 2007 -- Virginia looks like particularly ripe territory (similar to Colorado, which has also seen shifts in control of the state legislature, the governor's mansion and congressional representation, as well as Iowa and a few other states).

Or to put it more concisely, Virginia is a swing state.

Update [2008-5-22 16:19:57 by Jonathan Singer]: Of course it bears repeating (though I mention it in this post) that Barack Obama's lead in the commonwealth is within the margin of error of the SUSA poll -- just as McCain's lead is within the margin of error in the Rasmussen poll and the VCU poll. That, in a nutshell, is the point of the post. Not that Obama is leading, but rather than in poll after poll the race is within the margin of error -- a telltale sign of a swing state.

It looks like the commonwealth of Virginia is shaping up to be a real problem for John McCain and the Republicans in 2008.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Virginia finds John McCain leading Barack Obama by just three percentage points, 47% to 44%. That's a significant improvement for Obama after trailing the presumptive Republican nominee by eleven points a month ago.

The survey, which was in the field on Thursday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, so McCain's lead over Barack Obama is not statistically significant. In fact, with the exception of a poll from March, McCain hasn't been able to hold a lead outside the margin of error in Virginia against Obama in Rasmussen polling this year (he led by 2 points in January and 5 points in February). McCain's lead in the commonwealth in April wasn't statistically significant either, according to SurveyUSA. According to the Pollster.com trend estimate, McCain can't crack 50 percent in Virginia, leading Obama 48.3 percent to 43.6 percent. With numbers like these it's little wonder that the bright minds at The Atlantic only rate Virginia as "tilts Republican" in the general election.