This just in from the Tammy Duckworth congressional campaign… a new poll has her tied with Peter Roskam.

The following is a tabular report of a telephone survey among 400 registered voters in Illinois’s 6th Congressional District, who are likely to vote in the general election in November. The survey was conducted from May 9 through 11, 2006 by trained, professional interviewers following procedures established by Bennett, Petts & Blumenthal.

All polls are subject to errors caused by interviewing a sample of persons, rather than the entire population. In 95 cases out of 100, the responses to this survey should fall within plus or minus 4.9 percentage points of those that would have been obtained from interviewing the entire population of likely general election voters in the 6th […]

1. Would you say things in the nation today are generally headed in the RIGHT DIRECTION or would you say things are off on the WRONG TRACK?

RIGHT DIRECTION…………………………………… 27%

WRONG TRACK ………………………………………. 58

(DON’T KNOW)………………………………………… 15

Now I’d like to ask you some questions about the elections that will be held this November.

4. If the GENERAL ELECTION for Congress were held today and the candidates were: [RANDOMIZE]

o Peter Roskam, the Republican

o Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat

for whom would you vote? (IF UNDECIDED) Well, toward whom do you lean?

ROSKAM…………………………………………………. 35%

(LEAN ROSKAM) ……………………………………….. 5 >40%

DUCKWORTH………………………………………….. 34

(LEAN DUCKWORTH) ………………………………… 5 >40%

(UNDECIDED)………………………………………….. 20

Krol has some additional thoughts, while also noting that President Bush’s favorables/unfavorables were 34/65 in the poll:

It’s an open-seat election (they’re vying to replace retiring Congressman Henry Hyde), so only 20 percent undecided before Memorial Day seems way low. Voters in the district haven’t been exposed that much to Roskam in this campaign so far. He hasn’t spent much money. Duckworth probably has higher name ID than your typical suburban congressional challenger by her virtue of her immense publicity and primary, but independents and Republicans probably don’t know much about her. Still, this has to be highly encouraging to Duckworth after her dismal-in-victory showing during the primary (she narrowly defeated the vastly under-funded Christine Cegelis of Rolling Meadows and may have lost if third candidate Lindy Scott wasn’t on the ballot). It’ll definitely be encouraging to Duckworth’s national fund-raising abilities. Roskam has to be a bit scared by Bush’s numbers in what’s long been a GOP district. Roskam is more conservative than Hyde on guns and is more conservative than Bush on immigration. If there’s a Democratic tide nationally and in Illinois, and a general throw-the-bums out sentiment, Duckworth could pull off the upset. Roskam has the money and the DuPage County GOP ground troops to take it up a notch any time he chooses and (presumably) create a little distance between himself and Duckworth, who really needs Cegelis to ask her volunteers to back her. Roskam has yet to pull the trigger, however.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE: Sweet has more:

[The poll] shows that 26 percent of the respondents identified the Iraq war and bringing the troops home as the most important problems they wanted their next representative to address.

Issues associated with immigration came in second, at 19 percent. […]

Thought for years to be solidly Republican because of Hyde, the Duckworth survey shows the potential in the district for Democrats, especially if national, rather than local, issues matter the most to voters come November.

Roskam starts off with a stronger GOP base vote. Asked if you “generally think of yourself as a Democrat, Republican or Independent,'’ 24 percent said strong Republican and 15 percent said strong Democrat. When combined with “leaners,'’ the numbers are 49 percent GOP and 36 percent Democrat, with 10 percent Independent.

That means there is a swing vote to be fought over.

President Bush has high negatives in this GOP territory — 49 percent have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of the president and 65 percent said he was doing a fair or poor job.