Obama, McCain nearly even in Va.; might be moot

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Barack Obama took a narrow lead over John McCain late Tuesday as Virginia inched closer toward backing a Democrat for president for the first time in 44 years.

The state's 13 electoral votes had been considered crucial to McCain's chances of winning the White House, though Obama's wins in other pivotal states threatened to make the outcome in Virginia moot.

Obama led by about 30,000 votes out of nearly 3 million cast, with nearly 80 percent of the vote counted. Returns were delayed by a record turnout and long lines, and large localities that traditionally vote Democratic had yet to report.

In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Warner won nearly two-thirds of the vote over his Republican rival and fellow former governor, Jim Gilmore, putting both Virginia Senate seats in Democratic hands for the first time since 1970.

Across the state, voters in record-shattering numbers stood in a steady, cold rain at polls.

"I would've waited as long as I had to," said Lila Leikvold, who voted in Arlington after arriving a half-hour before polls opened at 6 a.m. and waiting 45 minutes in a line that went around the block.

Polls showed Barack Obama about even or with a slight edge over John McCain after two years of aggressive campaigning for Virginia's 13 electoral votes. Those votes were conceded as Republican for generations until Democrats won the last two gubernatorial elections and retook the state Senate and the other U.S. Senate seat.

That Democratic success, deep dissatisfaction with Bush and rapid population growth in the liberal-leaning suburbs of northern Virginia gave Obama an opening to make a contest out of a state that hadn't voted for a Democrat for White House since 1964.

Even before he entered the race, Obama had a rock star's following among black Virginians, about 20 percent of the state's population of 7 million. In campaigning for Tim Kaine for governor in 2005 and Jim Webb for Senate a year later, he attracted large and enthusiastic crowds.

Obama also had history on his side in Virginia. In 1989, in the former seat of Confederate power, L. Douglas Wilder was narrowly elected the nation's first black governor. Polls before that election, however, showed Wilder with a double-digit lead, a sure sign that whatever edge Obama might have gained before Tuesday was hardly safe.

Both campaigns took the fight to the countryside, hoping to gain an edge in rural Virginia, which can blend gun-rights enthusiasm and Christian conservatism with strident labor activism in the same areas.

Obama outspent McCain in Virginia roughly 3-to-1, dominating TV advertising and opening 50 campaign offices statewide to McCain's 24. Obama's aggressive registration campaign accounted for the bulk of 436,000 new voters added to Virginia's rolls this year.