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Proft poll: Quinn leads 41-39-5

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* From Dan Proft…

Liberty Principles PAC, an independent expenditure political action committee that supports candidates for local and state legislative office who are committed to the economic liberty policy agenda, commissioned at survey on the Illinois Governor’s race this week conducted by the firm of Fabrizio Lee (www.fabriziolee.com).

The survey, conducted over three days from September 27-29, completed 600 live interviews (418 landline; 182 cell phones) of likely voters (MOE +/- 4%). 30% of completed surveys were cell phone respondents.

The survey found Gov. Pat Quinn with a slight lead 41-39 over GOP challenger Bruce Rauner with Libertarian candidate Chad Grimm received 5% of the vote.

Other political landscape highlights from the survey:

-The generic ballot in Illinois is +14 Democrat (44-30) but it is only +7 Democrat (45-38) for the Governor’s race.

-65% of Illinoisans think the state is on the wrong track compared to only 25% who think the state is on the right track.

-Gov. Quinn’s is viewed favorable/unfavorable split is 33/42. Bruce Rauner’s favorable/unfavorable split is 35/34.

-Gov. Quinn’s re-elect number is at 33% with 58% of Illinoisans saying it’s time for someone else to be Governor.

-Gov. Quinn’s job approval rating is upside down with 39% of Illinoisans approving of his job performance and 53% disapproving of his performance. As an interesting aside, President Obama’s job performance is viewed favorably by 47% of Illinoisans and unfavorably by 47% of Illinoisans.

-With undecided voters, Gov. Quinn’s image is 15/29, his job approval is 27/46 and his re-elect is 13% with 54% wanting a new person for Governor.

-Gov. Quinn leads female voter by 12 percentage points. Bruce Rauner leads male voters by 9 percentage points.

-Gov. Quinn leads Cook county by +28. Bruce Rauner leads rest of Chicago DMA by +15 and the rest of the state by +13.

-Among those who have heard of both candidates (83% of sample) it is 41/41. Among those who have an opinion of both (61% of sample) it is Bruce Rauner +4. Among those who are unfavorable to both (10% right now but this will grow) it is Gov. Quinn +12.

“The last month of the campaign will be a contest between Gov. Quinn’s ability to effectively demonize Rauner and Rauner’s ability to make those looking for a new governor comfortable with him as that choice,” said Dan Proft, President of Liberty Principles PAC.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 9:56 am

Comments

First the Tribbies, now Proft.
Mitt’s posse is bailing on him
Better call Mr ReBoot for more $$$, but he might have spent the Oct. allowance already

Comment by CircularFiringSquad Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 9:59 am
Rauner should have ran as a democrat in the primary.

Comment by John A Logan Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:03 am
“The last month of the campaign will be a contest between Gov. Quinn’s ability to effectively demonize Rauner and Rauner’s ability to make those looking for a new governor comfortable with him as that choice,” said Dan Proft, President of Liberty Principles PAC.

Probably the first time in my life I agree with every word Dan Proft said.

Comment by Chicago Cynic Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:04 am
Smart comment by Proft.

Comment by walker Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:04 am
Idea: let’s all commission our own polls.

Comment by admin Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:06 am
===“The last month of the campaign will be a contest between Gov. Quinn’s ability to effectively demonize Rauner and Rauner’s ability to make those looking for a new governor comfortable with him as that choice,” said Dan Proft, President of Liberty Principles PAC.===

Proft is exactly right.

Throw in the idea of a Rauner field op, versus the Quinn/Union field op…who finishes best wins.

Comment by Oswego Willy Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:08 am
Poor Rauner. Illinois residents desperately want a new face in the governors’ office. They just aren’t real sure they want him, thanks to those quite effective Quinn ads and, to be fair, quite a few mistakes Rauner made all by himself, independent of his campaign team. Hubris, maybe?

Poor Illinois. Looks like we’re going to be stuck with Quinn for another four years. It won’t be fun. Another four years of Waiting for Lisa,perhaps? Tedious. And expensive, for middle class taxpayers.

Comment by Cassandra Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:09 am
65% Wrong Track
58% Time to Elect Somebody Else Governor

And Rauner is STILL just neck & neck in the polls. Yeesh.

Comment by John Galt Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:13 am
7% are leaning to grimm?

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:22 am
- Cassandra -

We could do worse than Quinn for the next four years. He probably won’t make things worse and, if he continues the last four year’s pattern, it will end up a little better. At this point, I think that is the best we can hope for …

Comment by RNUG Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:23 am
As things are, I don’t see a path to victory for Rauner. The race probably always was Quinn’s to lose once Rauner was the nominee, but Bruce had plenty of time to come up with a campaign that relied on more than just good TV spots about how he was a regular Joe.

But nothing ever came… no policy ideas, just meaningless ’shake up Springfield’ comments that had no substance, no punch behind them. As Rich has pointed out, he didn’t bash Quinn over the summer and now Quinn’s been able to define who Rauner is.

Rauner should have realized, after barely winning the primary, that he’d have to come out and offer people a plan. That he wasn’t going to wing it in Springfield, that his shake up had substance. That voting for Quinn was a bad idea not only because it’s more of the same, but because he had the ideas to fix this state financially and politically. This never happened. And unless there’s a major game changing gaffe by Quinn coming, he’s going to lose.

Comment by From the 'Dale to HP Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:26 am
Rauner hasn’t closed the deal. People are looking for a new Gov, but he hasn’t given them a reason to vote FOR him. Hating/disliking PQ is not enough of a reason.

There is enough trepidation with conservatives that they don;t like the dem lite ad he ran/ no social agenda/stances.

He blew the summer and saving money then is costing him now. Rich was dead on right about this.

PQ has always been a closer. don;t discount him on that. and he has proven to be a street fighter while Rauner and Co seem to be trying some sort of Marcus of Qeensberry rules.

What is amazing that conservitives lost with Brady and little $$$ the but here you have a moderate in the Edgar fasion with unlimited funds and still can’t close the deal.

If Rauner wins it’s inspite of himslef not because of himself.

Comment by Todd Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:27 am
-We could do worse than Quinn for the next for years.-

How, exactly? Barring a miracle return of Rod, I don’t see how that is possible.

Comment by Arthur Andersen Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:30 am
CFS:

I would not call Proft part of Rauner’s ‘posse.’

I am pretty sure that if you ever pinned Proft down to ask what he thinks about Rauner’s budget, Rauner’s ties to Stroger and Emanuel, etc., you would get an earful.

I appreciate Proft releasing details behind the polling to give us all a better grip of the dynamics.

As I said yesterday, the party poll’s demographics just didn’t make sense. In fact, once you realized minorities were under-represented by 33 percent, it looked bad for Rauner.

I wish Proft had released party ID cross tabs too. Oh well.

Proft is correct that Quinn will keep bombing Rauner.

But there is another dynamic here. Quinn has some easy gains to make by bringing Democrats home and turning them out. The +28 number in Cook? That is huge. 65-35. When you are polling above 60% in any group, you just turn them all out. The relatively weaker spread Rauner enjoys in the rest of the state means that he has to be much more selective about his messaging and turnout efforts.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:30 am
AA,

The way I see Rauner’s plans and budget (we have to guess since he won’t release details) is he either skips the pension fund payments or takes a pension holiday / bonds them out with another back-end loaded payment scheme so he can fulfill all his other promises like increased school funding, etc. Three or four years of that, and the State will be much further in debt with even more crushing payments.

Comment by RNUG Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:38 am
I’ve enjoyed a lot of the opinions from these earlier posts. A lot of insightful and well reasoned people. All, definitely quicker political studies than Mr. Proft.

Comment by VanillaMan Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:38 am
That’s a really interesting poll principally because of the cross tabs.

On the one hand, it shows Quinn up, albeit well within the margin of error. In other words, it has the race as a toss-up. On the other hands, the cross-tabs show an incumbent deep within the danger zone. The fundamentals overwhelmingly suggest that the voters are preparing to fire the incumbent.

If I’m the Quinn campaign, I’m deeply concerned about the favorable/unfavorable number and that their appears to be a hard ceiling at around 40% for Quinn in almost all of these polls. He can’t seem to move up.

He’s taken Rauner down several points with a ferocious barrage of negative advertising during the month of September. But Rauner’s favorable/unfavorable is still right side up. Barely right side up, but he’s absorbed the punch through much of September. And now the NRI investigations are heating up.

The Romney-Obama race is often viewed as a model for this contest. The fundamentals were bad for Obama in that race as well, but the President remained personally popular and the electorate seemed to buy into the view that some of the difficulties facing the Obama administration were not of the President’s making. They cut him a break. These factors allowed the President to “defy gravity” and contributed to his reelection. These beneficial dynamics don’t appear to be there for Governor Quinn.

These cross-tabs caught my eye:

-Among those who have heard of both candidates (83% of sample) it is 41/41. Among those who have an opinion of both (61% of sample) it is Bruce Rauner +4. Among those who are unfavorable to both (10% right now but this will grow) it is Gov. Quinn +12.

Those with an opinion tilt toward Rauner. Those who don’t like either candidate go for Quinn. But will the “I don’t like either candidate” people actually show up to cast a ballot?

It’s all going to come down to the turnout on November 4. That’s why the Democrats are pushing the advisory referendums. Perhaps they will have some success in manipulating the turnout to their advantage. But if they can’t change the nature of the electorate and the fundamentals seen in the cross tabs play out, it could be a very bad night for the Governor.

Comment by Illannoyed Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:45 am
Grimm numbers for Rauner.

Comment by phocion Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:51 am
- Illannoyed -

This “I don’t like either candidate” voter will show up … and right now likely vote for Quinn even though most my down slate votes will be GOP.

Last night I was talking with a couple of normally hard line GOP voters who had previously expressed their preference for Rauner. In the last two weeks they’ve moved from strong Rauner supporter to mpst likely skipping that position on the ballot or, maybe, holding their nose and voting for Quinn. They are not the first people to express that opinion recently.

Admittedly that is an anecdotal take on things, but that is what I’m hearing …

Comment by RNUG Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:53 am
I’ll agree with walker, Oswego, etc. — Proft is exactly right.

And if I’m Rauner, that’s a terrible development in the trajectory of the race, since his path to victory involves a straighter up referendum on Quinn as Governor. His spots against Quinn are brutal, but it’s not going to drive up Quinn’s negatives anymore, and he’s still not crossed the “acceptable alternative” threshold, with new developments and high GRP Quinn ads pounding him more and more every day.

Comment by ChinaTown Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 10:54 am
-RNUG-

Out of respect I’ll have to take your word for it about the conversations you’ve had, but it’s difficult to imagine many “hard line” Republican voters skipping the race (unless they’re social conservatives turned off by Rauner’s views on social policy). But if this were the case, they probably wouldn’t have any justification to “hold their noses” and vote for the Governor considering his social agenda. And if their distaste is a result of the ads portraying Rauner as some kind of greedy capitalist, those kinds of ads generally won’t move “hard line” Republican voters that already have a deep distrust of how businesspersons and entrepreneurs are portrayed by Democrats. Those ads appear, to me anyway, as efforts to shore up Quinn’s base and persuade independents.

Comment by Illannoyed Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:24 am
I think that Quinn absolutely has to survive the NRI scandal to win. So far the scandal has not significantly damaged him.

If Quinn survives the scandal he should be in good shape and can continue to pound Rauner on the vulture capitalism stuff, as well as the fairy dust budget, Romneyesque pivoting and stuff Rauner said earlier, like vetoing Medicaid expansion.

Comment by Grandson of Man Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:26 am
The most interesting point was left out was the Proft had a 64-20 lead with 16% undecided if he were in the race

Comment by Wumpus Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:30 am
Breaking news: Rauner has just written a check for a more favorable poll, he is expecting delivery next week .

Comment by 618662dem Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:31 am
== it’s difficult to imagine many “hard line” Republican voters skipping the race ==

Based on Rauner’s 7-point advantage in the ==enthusiasm gap== that Rich covered yesterday, there is something to this.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:49 am
That’s a live-interviewer poll with 30% cell phones. This adds substance to the speculation. Most of the polls up to this point have been automated, which tend to skew older/Republican. (Though to be fair, the Trib poll, which was live-interviewer, apparently drew a bad sample, as has been suggested.)

Comment by Ray del Camino Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:59 am
5%+7%=12% with no exposure,little spent. do you really think that they will vote for the other party`s standard bearer?and these are magic numbers?

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:59 am
=== a live-interviewer poll with 30% cell phones. This adds substance to the speculation===

We Ask America typically does close to that mobile phone reach in their polling.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:00 pm
- Rich Miller - Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:00 pm:

=== a live-interviewer poll with 30% cell phones. This adds substance to the speculation===

We Ask America typically does close to that mobile phone reach in their polling.

—

WAA may be calling cell phones but the FCC actually passed a rule last year that prohibited political polling firms that use automated dialers from calling cell phones.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/blogs/hotlineoncall/2013/06/researchers-warn-of-bias-in-landline-only-phone-polls-18

http://weaskamerica.com/

“We don’t call cell phones without permission. Make sure your views are counted by opting in to allow us to call you on occasion!”

So when WAA says they call cell phones, they’re really saying they’re calling the cell phones of people who have specifically visited their website and asked to be called on their cell phones. Not a true random cell phone sample and something to keep in mind about WAA for state and local races.

Comment by Polling geek Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:09 pm
I was confused by this:

“-The generic ballot in Illinois is +14 Democrat (44-30) but it is only +7 Democrat (45-38) for the Governor’s race.”

They say the race is 41-39-5 for Quinn-Rauner-Grimm but then here they describe the difference between Dem-Rep as 45-38 in the Governor’s race. I’m not clear on where the numbers 45-38 are coming from?

Comment by The Captain Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:17 pm
===they’re calling the cell phones of people who have specifically visited their website and asked to be called on their cell phones===

Nope. That’s not all they’ve done.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:19 pm
That Libertarian candidate is killing Mr. Rauner. Frustrated righties can vote for Mr. Grimm, but frustrated lefties have virtually nowhere else to go besides Governor Quinn since a Green or other alternative is lacking on the ballot.

Perhaps Rauner needs to make Grimm an offer he can’t refuse, like the one Mike Madigan made to Judge Tom Carroll a few years ago while clearing the field for Dan Degnan.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:20 pm
===Frustrated righties can vote for Mr. Grimm, but frustrated lefties have virtually nowhere else to go===

Grimm is hurting Rauner, but the split among folks voting for Grimm is only slightly GOP-leaning at the moment.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:22 pm
Probably would have helped Rauner to articulate a reason why people should vote for him.

And he wasted months and millions with that Regular Joe gag. It became self-parody.

Plenty of people would like to see a change at governor, but plenty of people don’t vote. You have to sell yourself to those that do.

Comment by wordslinger Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:46 pm
== but the split among folks voting for Grimm is only slightly GOP-leaning at the moment ==

Ouch. If Rauner loses, he really won’t have anyone to blame but himself.

Curious to see how those numbers will break at the end. This is a very interesting trend which seems to defy the conventional wisdom that Libertarians “always” draw votes from Repubs and Greens “always” draw votes from Dems. The “anyone but Quinn” vote now seems to be the “anyone but Quinn or Rauner” vote for a sizable chunk of the electorate.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:51 pm
== articulate a reason why people should vote for him ==

@wordslinger nails it. As usual, except when he and I are arguing lol.

Those “Dark Ages” by the Rauner crew during the summer months were baffling. Being one month out from the election without a single business ==success story== to counter the parade of negative hits is equally baffling.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 12:55 pm
Polls show lots of different results, logic says it going to be a tight race. And believe me weather will be factor. The Dems always seem to get the vote out. The Republicans are going to have work hard to pull this on out. Quinn still ahs a huge advantage he is the incumbent. If Rauner should lose this election the Dems will be strong for a long time.
Look for Madigan tank the state and send people voting with their feet .Quinn just can’t handle Madigan and Cullerton. Business will throw in the towel and leave.

Comment by Mokenavince Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 1:19 pm
I wish I had Dan Proft’s funny money. Imagine what good it could do if it were being put to use by someone who is politically competent.

Comment by Team Sleep Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 3:24 pm
Good insight by Proft.
At this point it is only going to get worse for Bruce. They keep finding more and more about him. Keep showing how brutal of a businessman and money driven he is.
The election could rest in the hands of the GOP on the LAC. If they can hit hard enough and it resonates enough to stick? That’s a big IF!
At this point that’s really all they have left. Unless somehow someone has something on PQ that no one has ever found out. The big guns for Bruce have already blasted and he is now falling behind.
Plus I’m betting the big PQ ads haven’t even hit Bruce yet.

Comment by DuPage Bard Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 3:38 pm
Rich, maybe a QOTD, Does Grimm get as big a percent of the vote as Cohen, Whitney & Green in 2010? Does he get as much as Whitney in 2006?

Comment by Carl Nyberg Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 4:52 pm
Whoever will adopt the rule that GOTV is the last 720 hours of the campaign will be the winner.

Some of what Rauner has been doing may be the ticket. Combined with some of these intense blue congressional districts going red, and Quinn may be cooked.

Comment by QCLib Thursday, Oct 2, 14 @ 11:06 pm
Rauner does not have the voted of seniors who are traditionally Republican. They are children of the depression and survivors of 2009. Rauner’s brutal business practices remind seniors of both events. And then there is the nursing home fiasco along with selling liabilities to a senior. Many Republican seniors will stay home or even vote Republican. Quinn looks like a boy scout in comparison.

Comment by Move over Friday, Oct 3, 14 @ 10:07 am