* 54 percent favoring and 37 percent opposed is not a “slim” majority, but here’s the Tribune’s new poll on whether Rod Blagojevich should be retried…
A slim majority statewide, 54 percent, agreed with Fitzgerald’s decision [to retry Blagojevich], while 37 percent disagreed. Another 10 percent had no opinion in the survey of 600 registered Illinois voters conducted Aug. 28-Sept. 1. The error margin was 4 percentage points.
More interesting numbers…
In Chicago, 35 percent of voters favored retrial and 51 percent opposed it. But 54 percent of those in the Cook County suburbs and 57 percent of those in the collar counties agreed with the notion that Blagojevich should be retried, the survey found. […]
By a slight margin, voters who identified themselves as Democrats were more inclined to disagree with the decision to retry Blagojevich, the survey found. On the other hand, more than 7 out of 10 Republican voters surveyed said they backed a retrial.
There was also a stark difference between white and black voters on the issue. White voters were for a retrial by a wide margin: 60 percent to 31 percent. The position of black voters was almost the reverse: 63 percent against a retrial and 25 percent in favor.
The takeaway: US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is gonna have to present a far better case next time if he wants to convict this clown with that jury pool.
The federal judge handling Rod Blagojevich’s case said [yesterday] afternoon that after the former governor’s retrial, he will not release jurors’ names immediately after the verdict.
Instead, he plans to wait 24 hours after a verdict is in to make the names public, he said.
“That’s based on the experience some jurors had with the prompt release,” U.S. District Judge James Zagel said.
He gave the media until Nov. 1 to file any objections (as they did the last time around) disputing his closure of the names. The new trial is expected to begin early next year.
This is the same judge that advised jurors to call 911 if they didn’t like reporters’ questions.
Also at Wednesday’s hearing, Zagel set several deadlines for attorneys. Prosecutors will have to notify him by Nov. 15 about any major expansion of the case - though the judge said that wouldn’t include notice about new witnesses the government many want to call.
Zagel also said he expected the retrial to take no longer than 2 1 / 2 months. The first trial initially was expected to last more than four months, but ended up running about 2 1 / 2 .
One reason a second trial could be expected to take less time is that Blagojevich now is the lone defendant. Last month, prosecutors dropped a bombshell by dismissing all charges against the ex-governor’s co-defendant, his brother Robert Blagojevich.
The states where the Democratic dropoff is 10 points or more- Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, and North Carolina- all have incredibly unpopular Democratic Governors who aren’t that strong even within their own parties. Obama’s still pretty solid in those states at least within his own party, but a sense that their party’s current leaders at the state level have not gotten the job done could be making Democrats less inclined to get out to the polls.
* Meanwhile,Rasmussen has a new poll out and the pollster finally added the Green Party nominee to the mix. That may have jumbled the results a bit. Ras still hasn’t added the Libertarian Party candidate, however, so we don’t yet have an accurate picture of the race. Numbers in brackets are from previous Rasmussen polls…
The Giannoulias campaign points out that the Republican Rasmussen may be “agenda setting” again. Their polls in recent days haven’t matched up well with others, including Barbara Boxer (where Rasmussen had the Republican up and the Democrat down, contradicting the CNN/TIME poll) and Jack Conway (where Rasmussen had the Republican way up and CNN/TIME had it tied).
If leaners are not included, Kirk has 37% support to Giannoulias’ 34% and Jones’ 12%, suggesting as is often the case that support moves away from third party candidates to one of the major party nominees as Election Day approaches. In the previous survey, Giannoulias captured 42% of the vote to Kirk’s 40% when voters were asked their initial preference.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Kirk voters say they are already certain how they will vote in November, as do 53% of Giannoulias’ supporters and 40% of those who are backing Jones. […]
Eighty-two percent (82%) of GOP voters favor Kirk, a fifth-term U.S. congressman, while just 69% of Democrats support Giannoulias, currently the state’s elected treasurer. Green draws single-digit support from voters in both major parties and 13% of those who are not affiliated with either the Democrats or the Republicans. Kirk leads Giannoulias by more than two-to-one among these unaffiliated voters.
Giannoulias is viewed favorably by 42% of Illinois voters and unfavorably by 44%.
For Kirk, favorables are 45%, and unfavorables are 39%.
Twenty-six percent (26%) have a favorable opinion of Jones, an African-American journalist, while 30% regard him unfavorably. But 44% don’t know enough about the Green Party candidate to venture any opinion of him.
Only eight percent (8%) of Illinois voters rate the U.S. economy as good, while 56% of voters in President Obama’s home state describe the economy as poor. Twenty-six percent (26%) say the economy is getting better, but 46% believe it is getting worse.
Fifty-three percent (53%) approve of the president’s job performance, while 45% disapprove. Obama’s job approval ratings in Illinois havenot unchanged for months and are higher than the numbers he earns nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
* Methodology…
The survey of 750 Likely Voters in Illinois was conducted on September 7, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
* We Ask America polled Chicago last night and found Rahm Emanuel leading the pack, with Sheriff Tom Dart and Congressmen Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Luis Guitierrez bunched up in the race for second place. Click the pic for a larger image…
Now for the caveats. I used this robo-poll firm a couple of years ago and had some concerns about response rates among African-Americans and Latinos. They have been trying harder since then, but Latinos are underrepresented in this poll by more than half.
Some names are obviously missing, but this is still an interesting mix. We’re looking at name recognition here. That will change if other lesser known candidates can raise the bucks.
Also, if you want to see how poorly the Daley name is faring these days, just look at Bill Daley’s numbers. Not great.
As we pull the trigger on this poll, we’ve found 40+ possible candidates mentioned in published reports, with more queuing up for consideration. We wanted to narrow it down to ten (because there’s only ten digits on a phone for an automated poll), so we added up the articles and chose the ten who were mentioned in the most clippings–not exactly as precise our usual polls…but what the heck. This is for fun.
* Roeder: Daley exit tough for biz: Unable to write checks toward another Daley victory, business executives will take their time and survey the field. Many will sit out a probably contentious election, or get involved only if the field is narrowed to two for an April runoff. “There is no up side to jumping in this early,” said Guy Chipparoni, president of the public relations firm Res Publica Group, which counsels clients on business and public policy.
* Reardon: Mayor’s leaving us high and dry: I’m sorry, Mayor Richard Daley. You may be tired. You may want to spend more time with your wife. I’m sure you know a lot more than I do about how bruising a re-election race could be next year and about what federal investigators may have found in their prying into your City Hall. But walking away from your fifth floor office right now, saying, “It’s time,” is just wrong. You’re abandoning the people of Chicago to the reality of democracy — but without the skills of democracy.
Unless Quinn can get his act together soon, he will definitely hamper Giannoulias, no matter what Alexi is telling the media. I find myself agreeing with Silver here.
* Nate apparently hasn’t gotten around to handicapping our congressional races yet, but here’s a link for future reference.
* Ever since the Daily Herald lost its political reporter (Eric Krol and then Joe Ryan) and its Statehouse bureau chief (John Patterson), its campaign stories have really gone downhill.
A great case in point is the paper’s latest piece on Republican 10th Congressional District candidate Bob Dold and Social Security reform.
The issue first heated up when Dold posted this on his Facebook page and then deleted it…
Congressman Paul Ryan has taken a lot of heat for his Social Security plan, which would allow people under the age of 55 to invest a portion of their FICA tax…
Offers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to Federal employees.
That’s pretty much the same idea that got President George W. Bush is such hot water after the 2006 campaign. And it’s very much like Dold’s own plan which he wrote about before the GOP primary in his Tribune questionnaire…
Additionally, I would propose allowing a portion of Social security payments (not more that 25%) to be put into Government authorized individual retirement accounts that would be able to be passed to heirs if not used
Dold now says on his website only that he would allow people under 55 to invest a “small portion” of their FICA taxes.
Ryan says his plan isn’t privatization, and that’s the only source the Daily Herald used in its alleged fact check…
THE FACTS: The official website for Ryan’s proposal, roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov, details its concepts for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs. It also includes a section called “Setting the Record Straight” that seeks to debunk accusations about the plan, as well as another section with answers to frequently asked questions.
According to the website, the Roadmap would not privatize Social Security. The personal accounts it proposes would be managed by a public board.
It’s not difficult to find other sources which claim that Ryan wants to privatize Social Security. But Ryan’s statement is presented as the one and only “fact.”
And instead of quoting Dold’s very own Chicago Tribune questionnaire which cited the 25 percent figure, the Daily Herald instead delved into the semantics of Dold’s original Facebook post and the he said/she said which followed.
I know I’m repeating myself this morning, but this is yet another reason why blogs can often be far better vehicles for reading about politics (or anything else) because they are much more willing to use material from different sources than newspapers are. It’s just stupid that the DH didn’t quote Dold’s Tribune response. It makes zero sense. Their fact check is rendered completely meaningless. I’m not sure why they even bothered.
* To make matters worse, the DH completely botched the admittedly stale deleted Facebook post controversy. This is the explanation the Dold campaign gave me for removing that Paul Ryan post…
It’s Facebook. We put things up and take things down all the time. We’re not announcing policy on Facebook.
And this is what the Dold campaign just told the Daily Herald…
As for the disappearing Facebook post, a Dold spokeswoman said the comment simply was replaced by one about a different issue, the proposed Metra STAR line. Dold stands by the original posting’s message, she said.
Democrat Dan Seals’ campaign watches that Dold Facebook page pretty closely and they say they’ve never seen the Republican delete a post except for that Ryan post. And you don’t “replace” Facebook posts. You can delete them and add a new post, but there’s no such thing as replacing them. It’s a goofy explanation and the Daily Herald “fact check” completely let them skip away clean. Also, if they don’t post about policy on Facebook, why did they post about Metra?
* Meanwhile, the Dan Seals campaign claims its latest poll has the Democrat with a large lead. From a press release…
– WINNING INDEPENDENTS: Seals leads by 5 points among self-identified independent voters, 39% to 34%.
– STRONGER NAME ID: Seals’ name identification remains strong at 74% compared to his opponent, who was recognized by just 47% of respondents. Seals leads in both Cook and Lake Counties and leads with almost every demographic subgroup.
– LARGE CROSSOVER VOTE: In addition to his strong base of Democratic and independent support, Seals is also winning 16% of voters who say they plan to support Mark Kirk in the 2010 U.S. Senate race, pointing to a diverse coalition of bi-partisan support.
The campaign’s polling memo is here. A We Ask America poll taken in early August had this race much closer, with Seals leading Dold by just 3 points. But there have been some problems with that poll’s accuracy.
* The problem with just about all media polls is that the write-ups almost never mention other surveys taken by different pollsters. That means you don’t get any context, and it can lead to outliers being touted as the only definitive results seen by hundreds of thousands of readers/viewers.
The Chicago Tribune is one of the worst offenders. Their numbers, by policy, are all you’ll ever see in their polling stories. And though they’ve improved somewhat over the years, their refusal to release all of their crosstabs means they are still operating in a 20th Century dead tree world. (This is not a knock on the paper’s reporters, mind you, but on corporate policy.)
Take, for instance, the governor’s race. The Tribune has this as a five-point race with Bill Brady leading Gov. Pat Quinn 37-32, with Scott Lee Cohen scoring 4 percent and Green Party nominee Rich Whitney and Libertarian Party candidate Lex Green at 2 each.
This suggests that Quinn’s recent TV ad buy touting Brady’s pro-gun views might have moved some numbers. But that could also just be a function of different polling techniques, considering that Brady’s unfavorable rating was only 19 percent in the Trib poll. The Tribune obviously does not push voters very hard to make up their minds, and not including “leaners” at this advanced stage is a big mistake.
* You also won’t see the Tribune mention stuff like the TPM PollTracker…
More telling, barely half of Democrats say they support Quinn’s call for higher taxes, while a quarter of them side with Republican Brady, who has said he won’t detail his proposed budget cuts until after the Nov. 2 election.
At the same time, more voters back Brady’s call for more widespread business tax cuts to spur job creation than get behind Quinn’s reliance on passage of the state’s first public works construction program in more than a decade.
But a telling sign for Quinn may be voter reaction to one of his most recurring themes — that he worked to restore trust in state government following the Blagojevich scandal. Under Quinn, lawmakers enacted the first-ever campaign-donation limits, though some criticized them for having loopholes. The General Assembly also agreed to put on the November ballot a proposed constitutional amendment allowing a limited form of recall of a governor.
Yet 70 percent of the state’s voters said they don’t believe Quinn has done enough to curb corruption in Illinois government, including nearly six of 10 Democratic voters and about three-quarters of those who classify themselves as independents.
It would be nice to see the wording of the questions at hand and some crosstabs, but no dice.
Currently, 37 percent of voters identify themselves as Democrats and 27 percent say they’re Republicans — a 10-percentage-point differential that is about half the advantage Democrats had entering the 2008 election. Another 31 percent call themselves political independents.
This is real trouble as well…
Despite national polls forecasting a potential wave for Republicans that could let them recapture the House, 45 percent of Illinois voters said Democrats should maintain control of Congress, compared with 37 percent who back the GOP.
As we’ve discussed before, so many Illinois congressional districts are so heavily gerrymandered to favor the Democrats that this 8-point margin signifies serious problems ahead.
And this ain’t good either…
More than 6 in 10 lack confidence in Democratic-run Springfield, though the angst isn’t limited to Illinois borders. Fully 55 percent of the voters say they don’t have much or any confidence that the federal government will make the right decisions affecting them, according to the poll of 600 registered Illinois voters conducted Aug. 28-Wednesday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
But this is kinda meaningless, depending on how the question was worded…
A total of 83 percent of the voters said Blagojevich’s conviction will make no difference in whether they oppose or support Democratic candidates on the ballot.
A majority of the 600 Illinois registered voters surveyed still gave a positive review to Obama’s performance as president — but it is barely a majority. In all, 51 percent said they approved of the job he has done as president while 39 percent disapproved.
I didn’t see any regional breakdowns online, but we can probably infer that he ain’t doing well in the suburbs and Downstate. PPP’s latest poll had Obama’s approval at 49 percent and disapproval at 46 percent. Rasmussen’s survey had Obama’s approval at 53 and disapproval at 47. An NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll had the president’s approval at 45 percent.
* Politicians Turn Out for Labor Day Rally: QUINN: This election on Nov. 2, it’s all about the economy, it’s all about jobs, it’s all about a governor, who believes, as I do, in the minimum wage.
