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*** UPDATED x1 - Poll Shows Big Kinzinger Lead *** Today’s videos

Tuesday, Feb 21, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Last fall, state Senate candidate Tom Pliura (R-Ellsworth) went a bit off track during a tea party forum…

Pliura said he was “disappointed” to see the passage of a civil-unions law in Illinois earlier this year, saying it “wasn’t necessary” and “wasn’t appropriate.”

The LeRoy physician and attorney said he was “strongly opposed to gay marriage.”

“I don’t think society ought to be condoning that anymore than, quite frankly, if a guy wants to get married with a donkey,” he said. “If you want to have relations with your donkey, that’s fine. Just don’t ask me to say, ‘OK, now that we have a civil union here, my donkey can get health care benefits.’”

And now somebody has posted a mocking video of Pliura’s moment…

Oy.

I called Dr. Pliura today and asked if he would do anything different if he had to do it over again. Pliura said he was talking in the forum about how his late brother was gay and how he was personally opposed to civil unions, but did admit “I probably should have just stopped right there.”

No kidding.

“I’m learning very quickly,” Pliura added. “I’m a newbie to this.”

* This TV ad isn’t so humorous. As subscribers already know, Rep. Randy Ramey was whacked for his DUI…

* Congressman Don Manzullo goes after Congressman Adam Kinzinger on government spending…

…Adding… Congressman Kinzinger also has a TV ad up…

*** UPDATE *** We Ask America’s latest poll has Kinzinger up by 13 points…

From the pollster…

A deeper look into where the responses to this poll came from reveals that Manzullo continues to lead comfortably in the areas he represented prior to the re-map, while young Adam Kinzinger is cleaning up in both his former area and the areas that are new to both candidates. As we always like to point out: a single poll in a given district should never be taken as a prediction of the inevitable. But the internal numbers–especially WHERE the responses came from–point to Kinzinger as the clear leader for now.

19 Comments

Poll: Half of Illinoisans want public employees to pay more for pensions - Half approve of gaming expansion

Friday, Feb 10, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Keep in mind when reading this Tribune poll result that respondents were allowed to choose more than one response…

* According to the Tribune, 65 percent of collar county voters and almost 60 percent of Republicans favor the “workers pay more” option. More…

[On cutting benefits for current retirees] Opinion was divided along income levels, with 13 percent of those earning less than $50,000 a year supporting benefit cuts for retirees, and 28 percent of voters earning more than $100,000 a year favoring it. […]

30 percent of voters would support cutting other state programs to better fund pensions. Opinion is heavily divided along partisan lines, with just 17 percent of Democrats supporting that idea compared with 50 percent of Republicans.

* In other polling news, the Tribune’s question on gaming expansion could’ve been fleshed out better…

Do you approve or disapprove of expanding gaming in Illinois?

The debate right now isn’t so much whether to expand gaming, it’s about how to do it. But here are the results…

Discuss.

35 Comments

Governor Flatline

Friday, Feb 10, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Tribune has released its poll results for Gov. Pat Quinn’s job approval rating. Quinn’s rating is as dismal as always: 30 percent approve and 54 percent disapprove. TPM poll tracker has Quinn’s average job approval rating at 31.9 percent over the past 2 years, while his average disapproval rating is 54 percent.

The Tribune’s own poll showed Quinn at 28 percent approval in September of 2010, not long before he beat Bill Brady in the governor’s race.

* Tribune poll by region…

For whatever reason, Downstate isn’t included in the graphic, but Quinn’s approval rating there is just 18 percent, while 65 percent disapprove.

* More…

The poll of 600 registered voters, which has an error margin of 4 percentage points, was conducted Feb. 2-6. The interviews began a day after Quinn delivered an optimistic State of the State speech to lawmakers in Springfield in which he declared that after three years of his leadership, “Illinois is back on course. Illinois is moving forward. And Illinois is a place that we can be proud to claim as our own.”

That’s not the view many Illinoisans hold about the state’s economy. About three-quarters of Illinois voters said they failed to see an improvement in Illinois’ economy or thought that it is getting worse. Of that group, 88 percent disapproved of Quinn. […]

The governor scores best within his own party, though the poll found fewer than half of those who identified themselves as Democrats approve of Quinn’s job performance — 44 percent. But 61 percent of independent voters, always a key political demographic in statewide elections, expressed disapproval with his handling of the job.

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