U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., trails Republican opponent Robert Hurt in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District race by 26 points, according to a poll released Thursday.
The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for WDBJ-TV Roanoke, shows Hurt holding a 61-35 lead, with 2 percent favoring independent Jeffrey Clark and 2 percent undecided.
The poll shows similar numbers to a SurveyUSA poll released six weeks ago, when Hurt led, 58-35.
SurveyUSA interviewed 800 registered voters, and determined 581 were likely to vote Nov. 2. The poll has a sampling error of +/- 4 percentage points.
UPDATE, 2:45 P.M.:
Jessica Barba, a spokeswoman for Perriello’s campaign, said in an e-mail that the camp feels the same way about this poll as the last one from SurveyUSA: it’s useless.
Interestingly, the wide margins in the two polls are in sharp contrast to a poll from about a month ago commissioned by the conservative American Action Forum that showed Hurt with a 49-43 lead, and 8 percent undecided.
