"What good is a poll showing a congressional challenger 14 points down to incumbent 5th District Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount?

Plenty good, according to the campaign of Democrat Al Weed, who hired the Zogby International polling organization and paid for a late June survey that showed Goode leading Weed by 49.2 percent to 35 percent.

Perhaps Weed's been down so long it looks like up to him. After all, voters in the 2004 election gave Goode 64 percent of the ballots cast to 36 percent for Weed, a 28-point margin, so anything much less than that margin looks significantly better.

There is some pretty good news in the poll results for Weed in his second challenge to the five-term congressman, said Fritz Wenzel, the polling firm's director of communications.

'I just think it's much closer for a small number of reasons,' Wenzel said. 'Nationally, Republicans are stuck because they are lashed to a leader who is just not very popular.'

In Goode's sprawling rural Southside Virginia district, which stretches from Stanardsville to Danville, a majority of voters - 55 percent - view President Bush unfavorably, Wenzel said.

'Only 32 percent think the country generally is going in the right direction,' he said. 'A 15-point lead for an incumbent is a pretty good lead, but the fact is it is a race now.'

Goode is viewed favorably by 69.3 percent of likely voters and viewed unfavorably by 21.6 percent, according to the survey taken June 26-28 among 601 randomly selected likely voters. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4.1 percent.

Weed is also viewed favorably by a 3-1 ratio as 44 percent of likely voters have an overall favorable opinion of him while 15.2 percent view him unfavorably. Almost 40 percent of likely voters are not familiar with Weed, compared with only 8.5 percent not familiar with Goode.

Goode said the poll results are not all that good for Weed.

'I think he's trying to put a good spin on a bad poll,' Goode said. 'Not only is he 14 down, if you divided the undecided equally, and I assume most of them will vote for me, then it is 57-43. It's not a good poll for him.'

Without candidate names, the survey found 48.5 percent of voters would support a generic Democrat compared with 37 percent for a generic Republican. That means Weed is doing 'worse than a generic Democrat,' Goode said.

Curt Gleeson, communications director for Weed, said Goode is ignoring a key finding about the Zogby poll that makes 2006 a real race.

'The line he misses is, 'Does Virgil Goode deserve to be re-elected and 46 percent said yes,'' Gleeson said.

The exact wording of the question by Zogby is: 'Do you think Virgil Goode deserves to be re-elected or do you think it is time for someone new?'

The survey found 46.8 percent said that Goode deserves to be re-elected while 41.1 percent said they would prefer someone else and 12.1 percent said they did not know or were not sure.

The results are interesting, and somewhat challenging for an incumbent like Goode with 10 years in Congress on top of 23 in the Virginia Senate as a conservative Democrat.

But Democrats have not done well in 5th District congressional races since Goode switched from being a Democrat. Goode was unopposed as a Democrat in his 1998 re-election and won his initial race for Congress in 1996 by 61 percent to 36 percent over Republican George Landrith.

Democrats opposing Goode captured 31 percent of the votes in 2000, and 36 percent in both 2002 and 2004.

'Virgil is not on the solid ground he was on,' Gleeson said. 'It really says something about Mr. Goode's job performance that 20 percent of the people who view him favorably don't vote for him in a head-to-head matchup against Al. And that is before they hear descriptions of the candidates. After positive and negative descriptions, another 9 percent go for Al.'

The messages that were tested in the Zogby poll were not disclosed but some are likely to show up in campaign advertising.

Wenzel, Zogby's communications director, said that Goode 'has got to run as himself. He can't run with his arms around George W. Bush. If Weed can lash him to Bush, he's going to have a better chance of gaining some ground in this race.'

Another recent Zogby poll taken statewide in Virginia showed U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Fairfax County, with a slim 48.8-43.3 percent lead over Democratic nominee James H. Webb with the rest of the likely Virginia voters surveyed undecided.

After that June poll, Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams called the Zogby poll 'a joke' and pollster John Zogby responded by calling Wadhams 'delusional.'

'Attack dogs don't attack unless they are scared,' Zogby said of Wadhams.

Allen and Webb didn't have to get down in the mud on this as there were enough of their campaign people and paid pollsters wallowing in the contest's early summer Jell-O wrestling take down. This could get more colorful by fall as the language of creatively insulting the other side intensifies and turns serious." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, July 16, 2006)