VIRGINIA: Romney, Perry locked with Obama

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows a tight race between the GOP front-runners and Barack Obama in Virginia.

a. Mitt Romney 44% Barack Obama 42%

b. Barack Obama 44% Rick Perry 42%

c. Barack Obama 48% Michele Bachmann 37%

d. Barack Obama 50% Sarah Palin 35%

Obama VS. Romney:

Romney sports a 9% lead among indies, while Obama does a slightly better job consolidating his party, which is to be expected at this stage.

Obama VS. Palin:

The POTUS beats her by 20% among indies. Palin only gets 77% of the GOP vote, while Obama gets 96% of the Democratic vote.

Palin only draws 1% of Democrats in the state.

Obama VS. Bachmann:

Obama beats her by 12% among indies, and Bachmann only siphons off 2% of Democrats.

Obama VS. Perry:

Dead heat among indies between the POTUS and Perry, 40%-40%. Obama does slightly better at consolidating Dems.

BIG TAKE-AWAY: The most interesting statistic in the poll is how well Obama is doing among Democrats. There isn't any sort of bleeding there that we see elsewhere.

For example, Palin only takes 1% of the Democratic vote, Bachmann only 2%, Perry 3%, and Romney 4%.

Those are good numbers for Obama, despite his -14% approval rating in the state (his indies numbers, btw, are a horrible 29%/61%).

As for the Republican 2012 primary...

1. Rick Perry 25%

2. Mitt Romney 19%

3. Ron Paul 8%

4. Sarah Palin 7%

5. Herman Cain 6%

6. Michele Bachmann 5%

7. Newt Gingrich 4%

8. Rick Santorum 2%

9. Jon Huntsman 1%

Few things stand out here.

a. Perry's gender gap is big. He gets 31% of men, but only 19% of women.

b. Perry leads a head-to-head with Romney, 43%-36% with a significant gender thing going on there, too. Perry beats Romney by 16% among men, but Romney beats Perry by 3% among women. We've been seeing this all cycle -- tea party candidates do much better with men than women.

c. Evangelicals go for Perry over Romney by 22%, indicating that he holds most stronger appeal with this doctrinally-friendly group than Romney.