51 Comments - reformer - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 1:54 pm: If these polls are in the ballpark, they indicate how big a disaster Nov. 6th could be for the IL GOP. If it happens, they’ll just blame Madigan. - wordslinger - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:03 pm: Duckworth up 15? Then that Big Money going to Walsh is dumb money — or their numbers wizards are seeing something else. There are a couple of dozen races around the country they could have been dumping their millions. You have to think they picked Walsh for sound reasons. Either way, if I were the Duckworth crew, I’d run like I was down 15. Given their efforts to now, they should be fairly fresh. - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:08 pm: ===Duckworth up 15? Then that Big Money going to Walsh is dumb money === As is all the new money behind Duckworth’s negative TV ads. I’m wondering if Duckworth herself is seeing different numbers than the Anzalone Liszt Research poll. - Will Caskey - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:12 pm: 41-39 in week two isn’t so much a “lead” as a “Thursday Night Football game only an idiot would bet on either way.” - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:16 pm: All the polls SEEM to be more than reasonable … then you get to the “Duckworth 15″? Tha is a 15 point … lead? That leads feel more like a “15 point quick sand pit of dispair!” Like to see much, much more about that poll, and would really like another poll to look at what movement has happened to be up …15 points!?!?! - Will Caskey - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:17 pm: Regarding superpacs…look at it this way. In Chicago you need well over half a million dollars to make a minimal broadcast buy. In, say, Carson City Nevada you need about a tenth of that. So when weighing why exactly a superpac funded by a probably not that savvy donor is doing what it is doing you should maybe consider that the superpac is probably being run by the media consultant, who is going to get a lot more money for the same ad buy in Chicago than almost anywhere else. - Shore - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:20 pm: Duckworth wouldn’t be opening a new broadside on walsh’s child support with the that european vacation thing thrown in if she thought this race was over, especially after that debate debacle thursday. I would disagree that this has been a horrible cycle for the ILGOP. Horrible would have been obama cruising to a reagan 84 or even bush 88 like national sweep with these races all long gone by now for a decade and Illinois republicans reduced to where democrats stand in the deep south right now or where new york republicans stood in 2009 controlling 10 percent of the congressional seats. Obama is down in most of these races from where he stood in 2008 and you can imagine if someone not from Illinois were the democratic candidate like in 2016 it would be even a few ticks lower. When you have the map pens, competitive is not supposed to happen. - J - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:22 pm: Hey, Rich DCCC poll showing Schneider up by 1 from 1 week ago: http://www.scribd.com/doc/110227348/IL-10-DCCC-IVR-Oct-2012 - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:25 pm: Thanks, J. Forgot about that one and didn’t see it on a Google search. - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:27 pm: ===I would disagree that this has been a horrible cycle for the ILGOP. Horrible would have been obama cruising to a reagan 84=== Reagan got 56.17 percent in Illinois in 1984. - wordslinger - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:29 pm: Rich, I agree, doesn’t make sense to go negative now when you’re up 15. Everything should be bright and shiny. Will, you make an interesting point as well. Are you saying the SuperPacs heads take the money from donors, decide who to back AND take points on the buy? I’d love to be in that business. You’d think the big donors would separate those two functions. Wee bit of a conflict of interest there. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:35 pm: ===…Illinois republicans reduced to where democrats stand in the deep south right now or where new york republicans stood in 2009 controlling 10 percent of the congressional seats.=== Yeah, um … if both GA chambers get “veto-proofed”, even if one seat each …it wouldn’t matter if it was 117 to 1, or 58 to 1 … “veto-proof” is … “veto-proof” … no matter how many seat pull you over. - Shore -, have you met or heard of Pat Brady by chance? Yeah, its bad for the ILGOP … there are stories already out there trying to save Tom Cross and Christine Radogno if and … when … the GA gets turned really “blue” … or even “Veto-Proof …Blue” You really think its not “…a horrible cycle …” Good luck with that. - walkinfool - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:36 pm: When the going gets tough, the biased get polling. - VanillaMan - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:37 pm: Democratic polls are supposed to show Democrats ahead. These polls are useless. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:39 pm: - Shore -, I know you are talking in some terms of Congressional seats, POTUS, etc., but you brought in the ILGOP, and that also includes the GA, and I don’t think you can say its not a horrible cycle for the ILGOP if they happen to lose the GA in such a way that may shut out the ILGOP in one or both of the ILGA. I am dicussing the ILGOP, but looking under a prism of Illinois at home, not Illinois in Congress. - Will Caskey - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:42 pm: Wordslinger, there are other configurations but most of the time the general consultant tends to be the media consultant and thus get the buy points. And sure the donors want their things but they are relying on info from the gc, who can frame it however he wants. So I could say, for example, hey look at Rich Miller’s robopoll, Walsh is in a real race, plus every dollar we put in means three dollars Ds could be spending elsewhere. And if I’m a donor my nose is not attuned to that particularly fine label of horse manure so I might think that’s really smart and the GC isn’t saying “please dear god play here and not in, like, Montana, that swimming pool isn’t gonna buy itself.” Maybe the donors have a chairman or someone but the effect is the same. You have someone with a lot of money and relatively speaking zero professional political experience and you have someone who has a lot of said experience. So you can absolutely have targeting based on what gives the biggest payout on the ad points instead of the most efficient expenditure. Either way if the aim is to preserve seats no R IE should be playing in the Chicago broadcast market. There are like two markets more expensive in the entire country. - Anonymous - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 2:54 pm: I am not sure that the Speaker really cares about the congressinal races. He did his job for the national party drawing a map that should get more D’s in DC. Also, as a Democrat, I sort of hope that Plummer wins this race. Can you imagine him in DC free from daddy?? - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:01 pm: ===Can you imagine him in DC free from daddy??=== “Yeah … if I win … it’ll be cool. Like an endless Spring Break, and I don’t haveta go back to the lumber yard or anything, unless Dad gets real mad and says somethin’ like ’stop playing Congress, the shop is full of saw dust’ or somethin’ like that … like college…” - hisgirlfriday - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:07 pm: As horrible as Jason Plummer representing anyone in Congress would be, it would be kind of hilarious to me if Rodney Davis lost and Plummer won. - Disconnect - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:10 pm: well, a year ago the GOP was written off. their efforts have actually been pretty good. I don’t think people believed these six races would be this competitive. I know, a loss is a loss. my prediction is that schilling and dold win. - hisgirlfriday - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:12 pm: “and you can imagine if someone not from Illinois were the democratic candidate like in 2016 it would be even a few ticks lower.” Obama is viewed as being from Chicago, not Illinois, at this point. So while Obama being on the ticket may help in the suburban swing districts, I think Obama being on the top of the ticket hurts people like Enyart and Gill in swing Dem districts because of the whole frustration with Chicago Dems thing happening downstate. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:12 pm: ===As horrible as Jason Plummer representing anyone in Congress would be, it would be kind of hilarious to me if Rodney Davis lost and Plummer won.=== For me, that would be “Cannol- a-tastrophy”, for YDD, that would be “Cannol-a-rific!” - Responsa - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:20 pm: ==Can you imagine him in DC free from daddy??== I totally understand where you are coming from with that view, “Anonymous”. “As a Democrat” you are keenly aware that something like that has the potential to end up being a real embarrassment. Case in point, JJJ in DC free from daddy hasn’t been at all pretty, has it? - wordslinger - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:24 pm: Will, good stuff, thanks. I can just hear the pitches: “Of course, it costs a lot more money to compete in the Chicago market, so if you could just add a “zero” to that check….” Great racket. Politico had an article over the weekend about the SuperPac consultants already putting together their ROI presentations, in case things go badly. - QCTraveler - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:36 pm: Driving around the QC this weekend you would think Schilling spent millions on yard signs alone. Too bad signs don’t vote. - ArchPundit - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:41 pm: So Rich–is the primary difference between the We Ask America and some of these the assumptions about what the electorate is going to look like? I’m assuming that’s why we are seeing a fair number of divergent numbers. - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:45 pm: It’s difficult to tell without seeing Anzalone’s internals, which they don’t share. I’m wondering about their weighting. But, even then, it’s still way different. - ZC - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 3:54 pm: A) Joe Walsh’s SuperPAC money is Now Or Never PAC, which in turn is getting funded by Americans for Limited Government, ALG. Whether Walsh has any ties to ALG today, he clearly had ties to it back in the 1990s. So it makes a certain amount of sense for an orgz to go all out for “one of their own,” someone they feel they have a special connection to in Congress, rather than bail out a Nevada Republican they have no connection with. B) That’s the more generous interpretation. The more cynical one is that, with the exception of Jesse Jackson Jr, there is no congress-critter currently on the Hill that I’d be more suspicious of than Joe Walsh, to offer illicit favors to his anonymous donors in return for their financial support. This is complete speculation on my part, but it is grounded in my overall impression that Joe Walsh will say or do anything, without a consistent principle, to keep himself in office. If you think, unlike say your garden-variety GOP Republican, that Joe Walsh will be -very- grateful for the aid you offered him, it might make sense to pay “extra premium” for his reelection. - Jaded - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:00 pm: I would say the prime difference between WAA and these polls is that WAA does not have a horse in the race. If everyone agrees that the Democratic polls would be the best case scenario for their candidates (just like the Dold poll is probably his best case scenario), then the Republicans are still in pretty good shape in all of these races (except of course maybe Walsh). I do know that all of these districts were drawn in an attempt to defeat the Republican incumbant, so I would say that anything other than that would be a “disaster” for the Democrats and not Republicans. It also amazes me how anyone can blame Radogno and Cross at the state level, when they had nothing to do with the maps, and are shooting at incumbants in almost every instance. The House Majority Pac is finding out how tough it is to knock of incumbants in districts redrawn to favor Democrats. Imagine how tough it is to knock off incumbant Democrats in districts drawn to favor incumbant Democrats. - Dan - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:00 pm: Rich did you censor my last comment? We Ask America is owned by the Illinois Manufacturing company and endorsed Walsh earlier this year! - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:03 pm: The IMA endorsed Walsh. But WAA has plenty of polling showing plenty of people leading whom the IMA has not endorsed. So, remove your tinfoil hat, please. - NW Illinois - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:14 pm: The biggest scandal in this election cycle is the outrageous level of ‘dark money’ spending. Karl Rove’s group just dumped $800,000 into the QC media market to aim at congressional races on both sides of the river, but that only scratches the surface of dark money up here dumped by anonymous donors who don’t have to report. As soon as November 6 is over, we have to work on reform on November 7. - Dan - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:22 pm: Having Obama up and Duckworth down doesn’t make sense I’m sorry no one who would vote for the Potus would vote for Walsh I’m sorry.. - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:24 pm: Dan, it happens all the time. For instance, SDem polling had Obama way up and Mike Jacobs trailing in his district. Other Democratic candidates have published polls showing them down and Obama up. Remove your tinfoil hat or leave. - Mittuns - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:25 pm: Plummer was on STL Public Radio this morning (Talk of the Nation). He was grilled a bit, but performed fairly well. Stumbled some on the Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge question. Other than that, Plummer channeled a quasi-populist, working class message. The real question is, who and how are people buying it? - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:27 pm: This also happens in reverse, btw. Very popular down-ballot candidates often out-perform the top of the ticket. - Shore - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:28 pm: oswego-you’re correct as usual Something called the city club of chicago has an event posted with a guy named rich miller in december-sounds suspicious. I don’t think dold’s mother thinks he’s up 10 and if you watch that debate with schneider that is the strained look of a man who knows his career is in the balance, not someone preparing for a comfy 12 point win. Karl Rove isn’t a new thing, he was here in 2010 backing Mark Kirk. I’m sorry that people don’t like walsh’s politics, but he’s been as congressman who he was when he ran in 2010 which is a flamboyant, uncontrolled tea partier, he’s getting support from people outside the area and at least he’s clear about it. Duckworth on the other hand pretends like she’s some paul wellstone reformer from the streets headed to change big bad dc, ignoring the fact that without the machine she probably doesn’t make it past that primary with cegelis 7 winters ago. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:31 pm: ===It also amazes me how anyone can blame Radogno and Cross at the state level, when they had nothing to do with the maps, and are shooting at incumbants in almost every instance.=== Bill Brady wins … that “map” would be so different. The ENTIRE GOP Leadership when it comes to the Map. Cross and Radogno have no one to blame but themselves, losing by vote a precinct to Pat Quinn, statewide. There is blame there for that, and it lays partly at the feet of Cross and Radogno Further … Since the ILGOP lost the mansion, and since the H&SGOP deserve blame, and … since MJM won 9 out of 10 races with a Republican drawn map… there is NO excuse that either Cross and Radogno have to losing seats when it comes to seats lost and the Map… unless Cross and Radogno want to admit that they can’t compete … especially with MJM. - Responsa - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:38 pm: Dan–where have you been? A lot of people who are not wildly partisan–a LOT– prefer divided government instead of one party “rule” and vote in ways they hope will achieve that. Especially because they hate the current one party rule in IL and want to avoid it in D.C. Most “normal” people do not agree 100% all the time with either party’s stances. Therefore, it is not at all impossible for people to cast their vote to re-elect the current President and also to vote for the other party’s congressional or senatorial candidate. That sort of ticket splitting happens all the time. It may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to many voters as history proves. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:40 pm: - Shore -, No worries. I wanted to make sure I, too, clarified how I was looking at the ILGOP, and makes sure you undertand that I see your take, and understand, I can’t see how it would not be horrible if back in the ILGA the GOP becomes more and more irrelevent. Much respect, - Shore -. - Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:43 pm: Responsa, so true. The example I always use is Lane Evans in 1984. Evans had the most anti-Reagan voting record in the US House. Yet, he won his district by the same percentage that Ronald Reagan won his district. Elections bring out amateur posters. Simple fact. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 4:43 pm: - Shore -, ===and makes sure you undertand that I see your take, and understand, I can’t see how it would not be horrible if back in the ILGA the GOP becomes more and more irrelevent.=== Should be … and make sure you undertood that I see your take, and understand it, however, I can’t see how it would not be horrible if back in the ILGA the GOP becomes more and more irrelevent. Still, much respect. - railrat - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 5:16 pm: OW don’t worry the “lunchpail republicans” are fresh off the golf course with HGOP leader(s) and VICTORY is in the air !!!! eeeehaw ! - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 5:22 pm: ===OW don’t worry the “lunchpail republicans” are fresh off the golf course with HGOP leader(s) and VICTORY is in the air !!!! eeeehaw !=== Whew! Now I feel better. How did Tom play? Cross is working on putting, but I hear he should work more on his Wedge game … But I digress … - T.J. - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 5:27 pm: I don’t know of any better news for a Republican than Garin-Hart-Yang showing a close race. - Angry Chicagoan - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 5:32 pm: I just don’t quite see Schneider pulling this out against Dold. The Dems needed the primary opponent in this one, I think. No way is Duckworth up by 15. But Walsh had this won until the abortion debacle of the last few days. Now it’s game on. Surprised to see Enyart evidently hitting a ceiling. Thought he seemed to be coming on strong. I think Bustos will pull it out against Schilling, if only narrowly — but this one depends on presidential coattails. The big question is how strong local organization is. In 2010 the Dems were super well organized in Whiteside County and MIA in many other places. Anyone got comments on what it is now? Curious to see how the latest broadside from Biggert is going to hit Bill Foster. The accusations are deeply unfair, but more people are going to see the ads than the factcheck sites. Overall, Madigan was probably not as aggressive on this redistricting at the congressional level as some other statehouses have been (e.g. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan Republicans). I think he was more aggressive with the legislative map. At the congressional level, what we have is several seats that are going to be swing districts on an ongoing basis. That’s probably pretty good for the sake of getting people involved in politics and government and keeping politicians on their toes, if not so much for Illinois seniority in Congress. - Allen Skillicorn - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 5:50 pm: I wouldn’t hang my hat on a 400 person poll. I’m always waiting for that magic 1200 responses. I will mention that turn out was very high today for early voting. I’ve never had to wait for early voting before. The crowd was much more blue than I usually see in my deep red area. - railrat - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 6:38 pm: sorry so late OW, driving home, but I heard with the “lunchpail republicans” if TC is within 20′ its a gimme !!! kind of like caucus ?? - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 6:52 pm: - railrat -, Who knows, the HGOP Caucus could turn out to be only a few foursomes, makes it easier for Tom Cross to finally have “Caucus” off campus … The Rail maybe? - railrat - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 7:06 pm: bingo - Oswego Willy - Monday, Oct 22, 12 @ 7:14 pm: Where these polls make me pause is the fact that the most glaring is the 15 points and Duckworth. Fifteen points is huge in any race and would be almost unfathomable here in her race, given all that has goen down, and what the next 15 days will bring… then Election Day. If I were Duckworth’s Crew, I would … right NOW … make sure you have an aparatus ready to take on Walsh, precinct by precinct getting out votes on Election Day. Maybe the real question is do you believe Duckworth is at 54% …that is just as difficult to believe at this point. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.