* Tammy Duckworth’s campaign has responded to a poll released yesterday by Sen. Mark Kirk’s campaign…

The recently released internal poll memo from GS Strategy Group (GSSG) on behalf of Mark Kirk for Illinois finds that Tammy Duckworth leads Mark Kirk 42.7% to 39.6%. There are several items of note when analyzing these data.

1. An incumbent U.S. Senator is not only below 40% but is trailing his challenger in his own poll. No matter what else we attempt to understand from these data, it is clear that Kirk is extremely vulnerable and he knows it.

Two other publicly released polls found similar results, although these are quite dated. An Ogden and Fry poll in June 2015 found Duckworth leading Kirk 44%-27%. A PPP poll the following month saw Duckworth ahead of Kirk 42%-36%. Even if we take all of these polls at face value, Duckworth is still besting Kirk.

2. The GSSG poll indicates that Duckworth gets just 71% of Democrats while Kirk gets 72% of Republicans and that Duckworth leads by a small margin among Independents. If we allocate the undecideds along partisan lines, then Duckworth’s lead will increase because there are more Democrats in Illinois than Republicans.

3. If we assume that both the overall vote as well as the share that both candidates get among the partisan groups is correct, the party composition of the electorate must be 18.8% Democrat, 66.8% Independent and 14.4% Republican (no need to bore you with the math). That is far out of line with previous presidential years. In the last three presidential years, exit polls show the party split in Illinois to be:

Even when Kirk narrowly won in 2010, the exit polls showed party at 44% Democrat, 24% Independent and 31% Republican. The only conceivable way to concoct a partisan structure like in the GSSG poll is to only consider the strong partisans of either party to be affiliated with that party. That does not adhere to any standard polling reporting procedure.

4. The Chicago Sun Times reported that the GSSG poll showed Kirk leading among Hispanic voters 44% to 39% and trailing among Black voters, 12% to 70%. Both would represent enormous and unlikely increases from his 2010 results. Exit polls from 2010 (a race that Kirk won) show him losing Hispanic voters 27%-63% and losing Black voters 3%-94%.

It is difficult to believe that Mark Kirk has increased his support among these constituencies by such a large margin and still trails overall. The only way that works mathematically is if the race is extremely close among White voters, a constituency Kirk dominated in 2010, 64%-31%. If Duckworth is even remotely competitive among White voters, then Kirk is far more vulnerable than it seems.

5. Other key measures of Kirk’s political strength are glaringly absent. There is no mention of his job approval or favorable rating. Perhaps that is because after more than a decade as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and another five years as a U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk has failed to create a statewide profile for himself – he is invisible to many voters.

Kirk has been noticeably absent from Illinois recently. He failed to campaign during his primary and refused to debate a completely unfunded opponent who then earned a full 29% against him.

6. Other measures of the political environment are also absent. What is the presidential match up? That is one way to measure the potential validity of these results and it is not present. Perhaps these data are absent because Kirk and his team know that they will be dragged down by the presence of any Republican nominee, especially Donald Trump—a candidate that Kirk says “if he was the nominee, I certainly would” support him.

7. Polls results should never have decimal places. A decimal implies a level of precision that a sample of 600 likely voters with a stated margin of error of ±4% cannot achieve.

The GSSG poll memo is a clear sign that Kirk is in trouble, and that his only hope is to scare voters. His internal numbers show him to be weak. Moreover, Team Kirk seems unaware of details of his weakness with Independents and White voters.

The remainder of the memo is dedicated to laying out a serious of one-sided so-called issue positons from both candidates that he wins decisively. These are not an attempt to understand public opinion, but rather an attempt to signal to third party operators that they should raise the specter of an imminent terror threat from cloaked Syrian refugees. Once venerated Republican Mark Kirk is relying on fear tactics and a rescue from the Koch Brothers’ millions to win in November—an even more sure sign that we are well positioned to defeat him in November.

* Related…

* Obama, Biden endorse Tammy Duckworth for Senate

*** UPDATE 1 ***  Kirk campaign…

One day after the race was called a statistical tie, the Duckworth team was forced to roll out an endorsement from the President–three weeks after the primary election and after he has endorsed multiple other Democrat Senate candidates and even an Illinois State House candidate. As the polling demonstrated and then was further verified by the Duckworth campaign’s hyperbolic reaction, Duckworth’s record at the Department of Veterans Affairs–both in DC and Illinois– is a critical liability as it demonstrates a record of failure and mismanagement that hurt veterans, cost taxpayers and continues to be litigated to this day.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Duckworth campaign…

“I want to make sure I have this straight: the campaign of an incumbent Senator that just had to resort to putting out its own internal poll - one that showed it losing, no less - is calling another campaign desperate? We’re proud to have the support of President Obama and Vice President Biden. Having popular national leaders who aren’t retrograde embarrassments in your corner must be an alien concept to Republicans like Mark Kirk, but that hasn’t stopped him from pledging that he ‘certainly would’ support Donald Trump, and we wish him the best of luck with that.’ - Matt McGrath, campaign spokesman