*** UPDATE *** I just got off the phone with Fox Chicago. They accidentally misreported the numbers this morning. The actual numbers are…

Giannoulias 44
Kirk 41
Undecided 10
Other 5

The poll was taken March 8th (the same day as the Quinn/Brady poll) and the margin of error is +/-4.5.

[ *** End of update and text corrected below to reflect update *** ]

* A new Rasmussen poll has Alexi Giannoulias leading Mark Kirk 42-41 44-41.

Rasmussen hasn’t posted the numbers as of 10 o’clock this morning, but I’ll check back later. [UPDATE: Check back after four o’clock for the full poll results.]

So, what the heck is going on? Yesterday’s poll, presumably of the same set of voters, had the governor’s race a lopsided 47-37 Bill Brady lead over Gov. Quinn.

I originally thought that the Quinn/Brady poll was an outlier, but Rasmussen’s US Senate numbers are in line with recent polling…

Again, if Rasmussen polled the same people for US Senate that they polled in the governor’s race, then this is a screwy year, baby. Screwy.

* Anyway, back to the Senate poll. Here are Rasmussen’s numbers for the current poll with their February, December and October results in parentheses…

Giannoulias 44 (40, 42, 41)
Kirk 41 (46, 39, 41)

That’s a huge apparent swing for Giannoulias/Kirk in the past month - a month when the Democrat has been hammered incessantly over his family bank’s troubles. Today was no exception. Tribune…

It’s usually understood that a Democratic president supports his party’s candidates for office, especially when the nominee in question is running for the U.S. Senate seat the president himself once held.

But today Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias’ campaign went out of its way to announce that he does, in fact, have the backing of the White House.

Giannoulias campaign sent out a news release highlighting remarks by President Barack Obama’s press secretary about the president’s support for Giannoulias, who not only is the Democratic nominee running for Obama’s old Senate seat but also is known for being a longtime personal friend of the president’s.

NBC5…

Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias got a show of support from the Obama White House on Tuesday, but it wasn’t much of a show.

WaPo…

Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the party’s nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, visited the White House Tuesday and picked up a somewhat tepid endorsement from press secretary Robert Gibbs.

And Carol Marin predicted today that there will be pressure on Giannoulias to get out of the race…

While Democrats may scoff at any notion of a latter-day Reagan revolution coming to the blue state of Illinois, they are hardly cheered by the challenges facing state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in his U.S. Senate battle vs. Kirk.

Giannoulias has tried to get out in front of the seemingly imminent failure of his family’s Broadway Bank, but there’s no way to put that story behind him as long as the FDIC could move in at any time and take it over.

Giannoulias met with David Axelrod at the White House on Tuesday. At the same time, Republicans were sending out dispatches with a reminder of President Obama’s recent denunciation of “fat cats who are getting rewarded for their failure . . . bankers don’t need another vote in the U.S. Senate.”

Expect heat on Alexi to exit the kitchen.

Not with those numbers, he won’t.