McCain senior adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, said on MSNBC that though northern Virginia “has gone more Democratic”, John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, still has a strong chance of winning the state because of his support in “real Virginia” - the downstate areas.

In conversation with the program host, Kevin Corke, Nancy Pfotenhauer said: “As a proud resident of Oakton, Va., I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia. And that’s really what you see there. But the rest of the state, real Virginia, I think will be very responsive to Sen. McCain’s message.”

Pfotenhauer’s remarks came a few hours before John McCain took the stage in the northern Virginia suburb of Woodbridge. When Corke asked her if she wanted to clarify her comments, in view of McCain’s forthcoming visit, Pfotenhauer promptly replied: “I did say outside of Northern…I did say ‘real’ Virginia, because northern Virginia is where I’ve always been, but real Virginia I take to be this part of the state that is more Southern in nature. Northern Virginia is really metro DC.”

During his scheduled visit, McCain himself tried to rally the faithful in an area that may already be out of reach. He told the crowd: “I’ve got to give you some straight talk. Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 17 days to go. We’re 6 points down. The national media has written us off…. But my friends in all this planning they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

Virginia’s 13 electoral votes have not gone to a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 White House re-election run. But the Democratic ticket has visited the state more than a dozen times since the beginning of this summer – more than twice as often as its GOP counterpart.

The CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corporation poll released last week had Barack Obama leading John McCain by 10 points in Virginia - 53 to 43%.