September 23 through October 15?
Friday, Oct 17, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I don’t know why anybody would publish poll results that include data as old as 25 days, but whatever, here are the numbers…
Democratic Illinois Governor Pat Quinn enjoys a two and one-half point lead among registered voters over Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, according to the latest statewide poll from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
But when likely voters are asked for their preference, Rauner holds the two point lead.
“It’s a tied race,” said David Yepsen, director of the Institute. “No one can predict from these numbers who will win. It’s likely to be close on election night and every vote will be important.”
• Among registered voters, the survey shows 41.2 percent favoring or leading toward Quinn and 38.6 percent favoring or leaning toward Rauner. Libertarian Chad Grimm had 4.5 percent supporting or leaning toward his candidacy.
• But among the 691 respondents considered to be likely voters, it’s Rauner who holds a slim lead: He gets 42.4 percent, Quinn has 40.7 percent and 3.0 percent are for Grimm.
The full sample of registered voters has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points. The smaller likely voter sample has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points. That means both leads are within margins for error, hence a statistical tie.
Among the 1,006 registered voters surveyed, Republicans held the edge in voter enthusiasm, with half (49.8 percent) saying they were more enthusiastic to vote than usual, compared with barely a third (31.4 percent) of Democrats and Independents (29.5 percent).
On the other hand, Democrats held the edge in the generic vote for US House of Representatives, with 46.6% favoring or leaning toward the Democratic House candidate and just 33.1% leaning toward the Republican candidate. Among likely voters, the margin shrank to 43.3 percent for the generic Democrat and 37.6 percent for the Republican.
“If every vote is important, then Republicans have the easier turnout task, since their folks are clearly more excited about the election,” Yepsen said.
Discuss.
- Nonplussed - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:03 pm:
Did they have one person making calls who wanted to split the minutes between two cellphone bills???
Is Sheila running the Institute???
- liandro - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:06 pm:
I agree–if polls are a “snapshot” of a race I’m not sure how helpful this is? The main point seems to still be that this race is wide open, and that Democrats will have to solve their usual off-year turnout issues or pay a price in some races.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:07 pm:
===I agree–if polls are a “snapshot” of a race===
This is more like a time-lapse film of 25 days.
lol
- Precinct Captain - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:12 pm:
I think their numbers in terms of the closeness of the race are on target, but I can’t say the same about their methodology. Maybe it took so long because instead of a call universe they used a walk universe. LOL.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:14 pm:
“If you donate $5, $10, $20, $50 dollars, our polling will have more relevance and be more timely…”
- Anon - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:14 pm:
Honestly, and I know there is still a lot of time left, I think Quinn has this. It feels weird to say, but Quinn is running the much stronger campaign.
- Percival - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:16 pm:
Democratic GOTV has a proven commodity, but the Cook County Machine ground game has weakened quite a bit in the wake of the actual enforcement of hiring laws, since jobs was (and still is, who’s kidding whom) the incentive that got precinct captains and the like to get the turnout. The know-how is still there, and unions are increasingly filling the gap. There simply is no ongoing GOP GOTV apparatus in Cook County, and Rauner is only bothering with the few local Committeemen who actually have an organization that can do much. It really comes down to how much GOTV Rauner can generate on his own, which very well might be considerable, as he has competent people in charge of it and plenty of money to run it. Obviously, Rauner can still win, and even by a couple of points.
- John A. Logan - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:23 pm:
Quinn wins it. It’s too close for Quinn to lose. Rauner needed to be up 5 or 6 points going into election day to pull it off.
- A guy... - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:26 pm:
Hmmm. Give him a B+ on the assignment and move on.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:28 pm:
“The time frame, measured by a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, 25 days ago, indicates…”
- The Captain - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:29 pm:
First the earth cooled … and then the dinosaurs came … and then we started making phone calls …
WE ARE READY TO ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS!!!
It’s tied. We spent our entire lives working to bring you the least interesting results possible.
- VanillaMan - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:33 pm:
I agree with the results at this time.
- AFSCME Steward - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:34 pm:
“If every vote is important, then Republicans have the easier turnout task, since their folks are clearly more excited about the election,” Yepsen said.”
I don’t really think this is a true reflection of the reality in the race. There are many voters that are not excited about the election but are voting for Quinn because of who Rauner is and what he has said he would do if elected. Voters such as myself are not excited about the election but are holding our noses to vote for Quinn. There is a real strong union push that is happening. The union GOTV effort will be much more impactful than Rauner’s in Cook County, where most of the votes are.
- Reality Check - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:36 pm:
Thank you all for the amusing comments on a Friday afternoon. Well done.
- Grandson of Man - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 2:44 pm:
The last batch of polls converged around Quinn having a small lead. The lead seems small enough to make this race a toss up. We can’t deny that Quinn has had momentum, compared with earlier.
I would like to see the next few polls, to see what the voters think about the campaigns’ latest developments (ads, debates, etc.)
- 618662dem - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 3:03 pm:
Invalid poll, to much time in the field. I would suspect a move from rauner to Quinn as the poll progressed, that has been the trend in other polls.
- Dirty Red - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 3:11 pm:
They do this every year. If memory serves me correctly, this time four years ago they had Brady up by nine. Whoops. You just cannot poll political races the same way you poll issues for academics.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Oct 17, 14 @ 3:19 pm:
IF they kept calling for another two weeks or so, they could have had an extremely accurate result.
“The survey was conducted between September 23rd and November 4th and has a margin of error of =/- zero.”