Well, this is gratifying -- if it's real:

In an election for the United States Senate in Virginia today, 8/21/06, incumbent Republican George Allen edges Democrat challenger James Webb 48% to 45%, according to an exclusive SurveyUSA poll conducted for W*USA-TV in Washington, DC.

Since an identical SurveyUSA poll released 6/28/06, Allen has lost 8 points and Webb has gained 8 points. Allen's lead has shrunk from 19 points to 3 points.

Interviewing for this poll began 8/18/06, one week after Allen singled out a Webb campaign worker at an Allen rally. Allen has lost support across all demographic groups....

Allen, of course, singled out a Webb campaign worker of Indian descent and referred to him using the obscure racial slur "Macaca."

I worry, however, that the polls might be exaggerating the shift in voter opinion somewhat. It seems possible that we may be looking at a variation of this phenomenon:

..."The evidence is that whites who turn down pollsters have less positive views toward minorities. There's the problem," said Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. This would mean folks with more racist views, ergo folks who would be less likely to support a minority candidate, would be harder to enlist in a poll....

You may remember some of the biracial election survey boo boos of the past: the 1989 mayoral contest between David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani in New York; Douglas Wilder versus Marshall Coleman in the Virginia gubernatorial race that same year; and the grandfather of them all, Tom Bradley's unforeseen loss to George Deukmejian in the 1982 California gubernatorial race.

In each, pre-election polls showed the minority candidate with a bigger lead than eventually materialized when votes were cast. No one really knows exactly why and where polls go wrong in biracial contests....

Perhaps whites, feeling a need to be politically correct, lie to pollsters, saying they will support the minority candidate when they have no intention of doing so....

Now that this is a race partially about race (or at least ethnicity), something along these lines could be happening in the polls -- though I hope not.