RICHMOND -- Six weeks of turbulence have turned U.S. Sen. George Allen's race for re-election into a statistical dead heat, according a new statewide poll.

Democratic challenger James Webb has pulled even with Republican incumbent Allen, who has been dogged by questions about his attitudes on race since insulting a Webb campaign volunteer at an early-August rally. Webb and Allen each have the support of 43 percent of the voters who participated in a MSNBC/McClatchy poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.

Independent candidate Gail Parker has the support of 2 percent, and the remaining 12 percent of respondents are undecided.

Allen held a 16-point lead over Webb in a July Mason-Dixon survey and a 4-point lead in a poll released three weeks ago. The Virginia contest has become one of a handful of closely watched Senate races in the final weeks of a campaign that will determine partisan control of Congress.

The latest poll results come from a telephone survey of 625 registered voters conducted between Sept. 23 and Wednesday. All of the participants said they are likely to vote in the Nov. 7 election. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Allen held a seemingly comfortable lead in public opinion polls until August, when he was captured on videotape needling a Webb volunteer at a rally in far Southwest Virginia. Allen used the word "macaca" to identify the volunteer, a Virginia-born college student of Indian descent.

Allen apologized repeatedly. But the episode revived questions about the former governor's sensitivity on race issues, despite Allen's recent sponsorship of legislation condemning lynchings and his work to secure funding for historically black colleges.

Allen this week adamantly denied an online magazine story in which three former University of Virginia football teammates, two of them unnamed, alleged that Allen, as a college student, frequently used an inflammatory racial epithet to refer to black people. Other former teammates came to the senator's defense and said they never witnessed racist behavior by Allen.

Webb, who briefly served as President Ronald Reagan's Navy secretary, also has dealt with controversy in recent weeks. Several female graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy took him to task for writing a 1979 magazine article in which he argued that women were unfit for combat and had "sterilized" the training at U.S. military academies. Allen's campaign recently began airing a television ad highlighting the issue.

The influence of these controversies is unclear in the poll. But the survey does reflect deep voter dissatisfaction with the federal government.

President Bush remains unpopular with Virginia voters, but not as much as the Republican-led Congress. While 42 percent of the voters in the poll approve of Bush's job performance, just 21 percent give Congress a favorable mark.

Only 29 percent said the country is generally heading the right direction, while 57 percent said it is on the wrong track.