A few months ago, I did a post about how Virginia, along with a few other states that Republicans have come to take for granted in presidential elections, might be worth targeting in 2008. I wrote at the time that these states were long-shots, and that the primary purpose of targeting them would be to put Republicans on the defensive.

Today, however, a new Washington Post poll showed that Democrats might be able to do more than just force Republicans to spend money to defend Virginia. According to the findings of this poll, Virginia might be a state that Democrats could actually win in 2008.

The last Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but the state is changing as the DC suburbs expand. The poll showed that the state’s growing population of independent voters said that they would prefer a Democratic president in 2008, by a margin of 24-13 (the rest were undecided, favored an independent president or a president from another party, or said it depends on the candidate).

Another encouraging sign is the fact that among poll respondents who expressed a party preference for president in 2008, support for Republicans was softer than support for Democrats, both among independents and the sample as a whole:

As you can see from the table, self-identified Democrats feel more strongly about having a Democratic president than self-identified Republicans feel about having a Republican president. Among independents, a majority of those who prefer a Democrat said that they strongly prefer a Democrat, while independents who preferred a Republican were more likely to say that their preference was somewhat Republican.

This poll does give some cause for optimism, and it reinforces my belief that Democrats should campaign and run ads in Virginia in 2008. But I am skeptical about Democrats’ ability to hang onto these independent voters once the candidates on both sides have been nominated. As teacherken at DailyKos points out, 46% of independents in the poll named Bush as the worst president since 1960. If the tilt toward Democrats among Virginia independents is largely based on anti-Bush sentiment, then we can expect some of these voters to shift once the Republicans have a nominee and the media starts focusing less on Bush and more on the presidential candidates. Obviously, who the Republicans nominate will determine how many of the anti-Bush independents they can win back in Virginia and across the country. If Guiliani or McCain gets the nomination, I would expect a significant number of independents, including those who are currently leaning Democrat because of anti-Bush sentiment, to move toward the Republicans. We might not think of McCain or even Guiliani as moderates, but that is how they are portrayed in the media, and thus, that is how they will probably be perceived by independent voters.