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IL-SEN Tue Aug 18 2009
Polls on the Senate race: People Believe Things
Rasmussen has awoken us this morning with a load of steaming polls. You know what this means--well, not much, really.
First, Senate:
3* In thinking about the 2010 Election for the United States Senate, suppose you had a choice between Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. If the election were held today would you vote for Republican Mark Kirk or Democrat Alexi Giannoulias?
41% Kirk
38% Giannoulias
4% Some other candidate
17% Not sure
So Kirk and Giannoulias are tied. Cheryle Jackson, by the way, does only 8% worse against Kirk than Ginnoulias. Given the lack of name recognition, that might mean there is a 30% natural anti-GOP vote. Without seeing the crosstabs, there's not much we can infer from this at all, particularly a year away from the election. So the news here is that 14 months away from the election, the two leading candidates are even. In other words, the news is...nothing.
Here was a shocker, to me:
15* When it comes to voting in the 2010 Elections has the state budget crisis and the Blagojevich scandal made you more likely to vote for a Democrat, less likely to vote for a Democrat or will it have no impact on your vote?
7% More likely
29% Less likely
60% No impact
3% Not sure
While 29% say they are now less likely to vote for a Democrat because of Blagojevich, 60% don't really care. Thank you, scandal fatigue. I guess this means the Democrats aren't going to be forced to own Blagojevich--or that the GOP is going to have to work extra hard to hang Blago around their neck. Given that at least 30% of the electorate probably wasn't going to vote for a Democrat anyway, these numbers should be heartening to statewide Democrats--but again, without crosstabs, there's nothing too interesting here. The interesting information would be whether the Democratic Party lost support among Democrats (and suburbanites) because of the Blago scandals and budget crisis.
