Voters in the Virginia Beach-anchored 2nd Congressional District are deadlocked in the deep-pocketed contest between U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and her Republican challenger, state Sen. Jen A. Kiggans, with less than three weeks remaining until Election Day.

Luria and Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach) are tied 45 to 45 percent among likely voters, with 8 percent undecided, according to a poll from Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Civic Leadership released Friday.

The results cement the swing district’s status as one of the most competitive in this year’s consequential midterm elections, as Republicans vie to flip it red for the first time since Luria won the seat in 2018. The race has pitted two Navy veterans against each other, dueling on issues such as abortion and the economy that the poll confirmed have been top-of-mind for many voters.

Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, research director of the Wason Center, said the race may come down to an “enthusiasm gap” among the likely voters polled — which she said could slightly favor Republicans, with 76 percent paying “a lot” of attention to the race compared with 60 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents.

But when a race is this close, she said, it could go either way, making it difficult to determine the importance of any one single factor.

Voters said economic concerns were driving their choices in the election, with 39 percent considering it the most important issue, followed by abortion (17 percent) and threats to democracy (14 percent). But they were split politically when ranking the importance of those issues. Democrats prioritized the latter two issues over inflation and the economy, identifying abortion as their top issue at 31 percent, while Republicans largely united behind the economy and inflation as most important (61 percent).

Independents — representing just over a third of those polled — prioritized the economy (40 percent), threats to democracy (14 percent) and abortion (13 percent).

Independents’ prioritization of economic issues as their top concern could be helpful for Kiggans, Bromley-Trujillo said, as Republicans nationwide have sought to capitalize on those concerns as they seek to take control of Congress. Still, slightly more independents said they planned to vote for Luria. “Clearly the candidates need to win over independents to win this race,” Bromley-Trujillo added.

The poll also found a 41 percent approval rating for President Biden, compared with 55 percent who disapprove. By contrast, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) enjoys a 56 percent approval rating with 34 percent disapproving. Biden only narrowly won in the 2nd in 2020 compared with Youngkin’s double-digit win last year — contributing to Republicans’ belief that they could flip the district this year.

But while Republicans have been hammering Biden, the president appeared to be more in the background in this race, Bromley-Trujillo said, considering that a plurality of likely Virginia voters polled (45 percent) said he was not much of a factor in their vote for Congress.

The race between the two Navy veterans in the Virginia Beach-anchored district has been one of the most expensive in Virginia this year, with the candidates and PACs spending more than $12 million on ads in the race. Luria has raised more than $8 million this year — four times as much as Kiggans — with a sizable cash-on-hand advantage. But interest in the race from national Republicans (i.e., millions of dollars from them) has kept Kiggans neck-and-neck with Luria on the airwaves.

The candidates have been dueling in messaging on the very issues that voters listed as top-of-mind in the poll, Bromley-Trujillo noted.

“I think it plays into what the candidates’ messaging has been,” she said. “Luria has certainly prioritized abortion and played up her strengths as a veteran who has dealt with veterans’ issues and democratic issues being on the Jan. 6 committee, so all of that plays into her messaging. And for Kiggans, certainly she has been hammering home inflation, the economy, specifically relating to gas prices, and so this really fits into that messaging for both of the candidates.”

Luria has run numerous attack ads on abortion, repeatedly accusing Kiggans of wanting to ban abortion nationally without exception. Kiggans denies that, noting that she does support exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Speaking as her surrogate, Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) has said Kiggans supports a 15-week ban.

According to the Wason Center poll, 47 percent of voters said the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was a major factor in their vote this year, with 17 percent describing it as a minor factor and 34 percent saying it’s not a factor. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats indicated that they were galvanized by the issue, as well as women (54 percent) and Black voters (68 percent), while Republicans, men and White voters were less likely to consider abortion a major issue.

In the Wason poll, 66 percent of voters said inflation was a major factor in their vote, while 18 percent considered it a minor factor and 15 percent said it was not one. But once again the results were very divided along partisan lines, with Republicans near unanimously identifying it as a major factor (94 percent), compared to 44 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents.

As Bromley-Trujillo noted, voters’ prioritization of protecting democracy from threats as a top-three issue — particularly among Democrats and independents — could be relevant for Luria. The two-term congresswoman has called her service on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol the most important work she has done in her tenure. The former Navy commander has highlighted her service on the committee in some of her opening TV ads. And she’s has gone after Kiggans with increasing intensity for hesitating to acknowledge Biden as legitimately elected, calling on her to answer the question at a recent debate and calling her an election denier.

Kiggans, in a past interview with The Washington Post, would not answer the question when asked for a yes or no answer, and after last week’s debate would not answer the question when asked by other reporters.

Among voters who already voted in the election, 56 percent cast a ballot for Luria while 29 percent voted for Kiggans. But that largely tracks with trends in recent elections in which Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans.

The poll, conducted by phone between Oct. 12-18, surveyed 820 likely Virginia voters in the district, with a 3.9 percent margin of error.