* The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU has some new statewide poll results. They poll every year. Let’s start with right track, wrong track…

Fewer than one in five voters in the Simon Poll (19.2%) said they thought things in the country were going in the right direction, down significantly from the three in ten (30.2%) who said so in 2010.

Perception of the direction of the state may have bottomed out. Only 14.9% said Illinois was heading in the right direction, statistically equivalent with last year’s 12.2% “right direction” response.

Interesting that national right track has cratered here while state right track has risen ever so slightly. Back in 2008, for instance, the Institute’s poll showed state right track at 12.4 percent.

You might think the national right track decline could be the result of President Barack Obama’s decline. Obama’s Illinois job approval rating is 51.8 percent, essentially identical to his Illinois approval rating in the Institute’s poll a year ago. That’s pretty much the same as a We Ask America poll taken a few weeks ago.

* Gov. Pat Quinn’s approval rating is 35.5 percent. That’s more than 5 points higher than the recent We Ask America poll, which had him slightly below 30 percent, but still close enough to essentially validate both results. The Institute didn’t poll Quinn’s job approval last fall, so there’s no way to measure his change over time in this particular category. But 35.5 percent is about where everybody has had Quinn for well over a year. Quinn’s approval rating in the Institute’s October, 2009 poll was 66.5 percent.

* Now, as you know, I don’t usually do national stuff, but I thought you’d like to see the rest of these numbers. As always, do your very best to avoid bumper sticker slogans and, please, eschew regurgitated DC talking points in comments. Presidential head-to-heads…

From the Institute…

“You could look at this as being uncomfortably close for the president in his home state,” said Simon Institute Director David Yepsen. “On the other hand you could say Obama is holding up fairly well in Illinois, given the difficult year he has had politically and the continued poor performance of the economy.”

* Compare those results to a recent We Ask America poll and there are some differences…

[Obama had] 50 percent vs. former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 35 percent. Other match-ups look similar: Obama 52 percent vs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 30 percent; Obama 53 percent vs. businessman Herman Cain at 30 percent; and Obama 53 percent vs. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 34 percent.

The We Ask America poll was conducted September 28 and Oct. 2. The Simon Institute poll was conducted Oct. 11-16. The Institute’s poll has apparently captured the national Cain surge. However, the Institute’s poll has Obama doing worse against the Republicans than he WAA’s poll. He’s under 50 in all but one Institute poll, and over 50 against everybody in the WAA poll. Then again, the numbers are not hugely different, so we could be looking at noise and methodology differences here. WAA does robopolling, for instance, while the Institute uses humans.

* The Institute also asked Republicans which GOP candidate they preferred…

Keep in mind that self-identified Republicans are a fairly small percentage in this state, so the margin of error is going to be quite high for that subset on a total polling universe of 1,000 registered voters.

* Also, in case anybody wants to know, the Simon Institute didn’t use taxpayer dollars to conduct this poll.