No crosstabs yet, but the Tarrance Group - a Republican pollster working for Peraica - has a poll that claims Tony Peraica is leading Todd Stroger 42-38 with 20 percent undecided.

One very important point to remember: Lots of non-machine people have run lots of polls in the past where they were leading or right in the game and then BOOM! the machine kicks in late and they get clobbered. Also, we don’t have any crosstabs so we don’t know how the African-American vote is breaking (black voters tend to break very late).

They posted a couple of other answers in the executive summary (doc file):

· Just 27% of voters say Cook County is going in the right direction, and a 52% say things are off on the wrong track.

· Fully two-thirds (66%) of voters disagree with the statement that “the next Cook County Board President should be as much like retiring President Stroger as possible.” […]

Todd Stroger, however, suffers from a negative image, only compounded by the recent decision to select him as the Democratic candidate. Of the 83% who say they know about that decision, fully 62% are less likely to vote for Stroger because it.

And they add this:

Currently, just 29% of voters say they will vote for Judy Baar Topinka, while Blagojevich receives fully 60%, with just 10% undecided. The fact that voters have largely made up their mind in the Gubernatorial race, means greater attention will be paid to down ticket races like the Cook County Board President sooner.

Those Peraica numbers for Topinka are very close to Topinka’s own poll, which had her down 60-30 in Cook.

The methodology is in the exec summary, but the MoE was 4.9 percent, with 407 registered, likely voters surveyed. Breakdown was 24 percent Republicans and 65 percent Democrats.

UPDATE: Also, Peraica supporters, remember this: The machine don’t play beanbag. This will be a brutal, brutal race.