* Dennis Byrne writes…

My own guess is that Brady is doing much better in his gubernatorial race than his Republican teammate Kirk in the Senate race because of the dissatisfaction of conservatives with Kirk.

I’ve seen this speculation before among conservatives, so I’m not trying to single out Byrne here. But the argument doesn’t really hold up if you look deeper into the polls. Byrne was referring to the most recent Rasmussen polling, so let’s look at the pollster’s crosstabs, with leaners, among conservatives…

Brady: 78%

Kirk: 73%

It’s 75 percent of conservatives for Brady without leaners and 69 percent for Kirk. Little to no difference in the split.

Public Policy Polling’s latest crosstabs for conservatives…

Brady 70%

Kirk: 66%

Again, Kirk is doing slightly worse than Brady, but not all that much. It certainly doesn’t explain the huge difference in their respective races with their Democratic opponents. As you already know, Rasmussen has the leads at 13% for Brady and 4% for Kirk (both totals include leaners). PPP had Brady winning by 9 and Giannoulias ahead by 2.

* So, why is there such a difference between the head-to-heads? Well, for one, Quinn is a bumbling incumbent in an anti-incumbent year who ran twice with Rod Blagojevich, has a $13 billion deficit and 10+ percent unemployment rate and is encumbered with a 63 percent job disapproval rating. The Senate seat is open, so neither men are defined as incumbents and Kirk has been damaged as much so far by his own problems as Giannoulias has. Brady is still mostly an unknown quantity, and people don’t seem to care because Quinn is so bad.

* The crosstabs on party and gender are kinda all over the place. Rasmussen has Brady getting far more Republican support than Kirk, but PPP has it almost the same. Rasmussen also has Brady getting much more support from women than Kirk, but, again, PPP has it much closer.

Your thoughts?

…Adding… The Sun-Times has now posted a story about the latest Rasmussen poll, which was released yesterday.