A snapshot from Virginia of the Obama-McCain race

Violinist andObama campaign volunteer Linda Plaut arrived at 5:30 this morning at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, a K-5 public school in Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech (short for Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University).

(For the record,Plaut is the stepmother of my girlfriend, Julie Plaut, who interviewed her stepmom this afternoon and relayed the results to me.)Virginia, which carries 13 electoral votes, hasn’t gone to a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. The polls close there at 6 p.m. CST. If Democratic presidential nominee and Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama carries Virginia, Republican nominee and Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain will have a very hard (though not impossible) time capturing the race for president.

People were already lining up asPlaut got to the school and started preparing for her role as a poll watcher for Obama. When the polls opened at 6 a.m., several of the veteran election judges serving at the school said they were