* The Alexi Giannoulias campaign has two recent polls for our perusal. Click here for the memo.

The first poll was conducted April 27th through the 29th by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the campaign…

Giannoulias 37
Kirk 43

The Giannoulias family bank was seized on April 23rd, so they gave the event some time to percolate and then ran their poll. Their result is pretty close to Rasmussen’s April 28th poll which had Kirk ahead of Giannoulias 46-38.

The Giannoulias campaign let things settle down a bit and went back into the field after running a few hundred thousand dollars in TV ads which attacked Mark Kirk and tied him to former President Bush. The ad started around May 4th…

Kirk quickly countered with his own TV ad buy…

The latest Giannoulias campaign poll was taken May 11th through the 13th - just after the ad buy concluded - and shows the race a tie…

Kirk 44
Giannoulias 44

We shouldn’t jump to too many conclusions until we see some independent polling, but there you go. From what I gather, the use of Bush in that ad pushed recalcitrant African-Americans and other Democrats towards Giannoulias. He’s been hovering at around 60 percent or so support there, but calling out Kirk as a “Bush Republican” apparently works enough to move numbers.

* In other campaign news, Gov. Quinn recently fed some red meat to the base…

Quinn advised his fellow Democrats to stand up to the likes of Palin.

“We’re not going to let a bunch of right-wing reactionary politicians tear down our state, tear down our president, tear down our country for political gain,” he said.

* Related…

* Social Media: How the Campaigns Stack Up

* Kirk calls for restoration of line-item veto

* Kirk: “Let the Girls Play”

* Green Party U.S. Senate Candidate Visits Peoria