Different day. Different poll. Same result.

A survey released yesterday by Public Policy Polling shows Barack Obama and John McCain nearly neck-and-neck in traditionally Republican Virginia. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is favored by 46 percent.

McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, is preferred by 44 percent. Ten percent are undecided.

The presidential race in Virginia could be considered a dead heat, because the 2-percentagepoint spread between the candidates is within the July 17-through-Sunday poll's margin of error, plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Public Policy Polling interviewed 1,327 likely voters.

The latest Rasmussen poll also shows McCain and Obama in a virtual tie.

McCain is preferred by 48 percent to 47 percent for Obama. The results of the Rasmuss en survey, conducted July 17 and based on responses from 500 likely voters, could vary 4.5 percentage points in either direction.

The Public Policy and Rasmussen polls support the contention of both political parties that Virginia, which hasn't sided with a Democrat for president since 1964, may be in play this year.

"It seems safe to say that Virginia will be one of the more closely contested states in the country this fall," said Dean Debnam, president of Raleigh, N.C.,-based Public Policy Polling.

The Public Policy survey, echoing Rasmussen, puts former Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner far ahead of former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring five-term Republican John W. Warner.

Mark Warner, who is not related to the incumbent, is backed by 57 percent; Gilmore, by 32 percent. Warner leads Gilmore in Rasmussen, 57 percent to 34 percent.

And testing what it describes as a "do-over" of the 2006 U.S. Senate nail-biter, Public Policy asked voters to choose between Democrat Jim Webb and Republican then-incumbent George Allen for the U.S. Senate.

Webb is preferred by 45 percent to 43 percent for Allen, with 12 percent are undecided.

In an upset that tipped the Senate to the Democrats, Webb edged Allen by about 9,000 votes, derailing his presidential ambitions.

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com.