Voters turning out at record rate in Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Months of heavy presidential campaigning across what used to be a GOP stronghold had Virginians turning out to vote at record pace Tuesday in a state considered crucial to winning the nation.

Up to 40 percent of the state's more than 5 million registered voters cast ballots by Tuesday morning, twice the usual pace for a presidential election, said Nancy Rodrigues, executive secretary of the state elections board.

Long lines and scattered problems with voting machines were reported as a steady rain fell around the state.

"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.

"This is an important day."

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 a 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, to an extent. 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.

In Farmville, Va., Rita Moseley voted at a polling place near a former all-black school. Moseley, 62, was among the black students who had to leave town to attend school elsewhere after Prince Edward County closed its public schools in the late 1950s rather than integrate them.

Obama's candidacy "says change is coming, and not just the change in voting but the change in people. There was change just in Barack Obama getting as far as he's gotten right now," she said.

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.

Democrats stood to pick up a pair of GOP-held congressional seats in the state, and possibly more. Heading into Tuesday, Mark Warner was trouncing his fellow former governor, Republican Jim Gilmore, in polling on the race to replace John Warner, a Republican retiring after five terms. Mark Warner and John Warner are not related.

Democrat Gerald Connolly was favored to win the House seat of retiring Republican Tom Davis in the Democratic-leaning Washington suburbs. Two other Republican House members, Thelma Drake and Virgil Goode, were struggling to keep their seats from Democratic challengers.