ArchPundit

Excerpts from Rod McCulloch’s poll of IL-14 are below. First, no head to head since it’s from a poll of only likely Republican primary voters. Hastert’s base is strong though from the results

Republican voters in the 14th Congressional District are still solidly behind
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, according to a new poll released Sunday.

The poll was conducted by McCulloch Research & Polling, and sponsored by a
potential candidate to replace Speaker Hastert, should he retire after this
election.

The poll of 400 likely Republican primary voters, asked if respondents thought
their Congressman should resign as a result of the Mark Foley scandal. An
overwhelming majority, 89.0%, rejected that idea. Only 3.5% of the respondents
thought that Speaker Hastert should resign.

The poll also showed that Speaker Hastert’s approval rating among Republican
voters is 87.4%, with 44.0% saying that the Speaker is strongly favorable.
43.4% of the respondents rated the Speaker as favorable.

The pollster, Rod McCulloch, said the poll showed that Speaker Hastert is as
strong as ever among his Republican base of voters. “Republican voters in the
district know the Congressman too well to believe the national hype about the
Foley scandal,” McCulloch said. “If anything, the Foley scandal has energized
the Speaker’s base, and they utterly reject Democratic allegations regarding
Hastert’s role in the matter.”

McCulloch said that while respondents were not asked about the election on
Tuesday, he said the results bode well for Speaker Hastert’s chances. “Since
this is a Republican district, it stands to reason that the only way that the
Speaker would be endangered is to be abandoned by his Republican base,”
McCulloch said. “It’s apparent that’s not happening anytime soon.”

“If and when the Speaker decides to hang it up, he is so popular among
Republican primary voters in the 14th District, that he will have a major say
in who is going to replace him in Congress,” McCulloch said. “All roads to
replacing him lead through Denny.”

The poll was conducted Oct. 26-Oct. 30.

The District has a Cook Partisan District of +5 and a Bush Kerry split of 55-44 in 2004. It’ s a Republican District, but only outperforms 6 by 2 points in terms of Republican Presidential votes.

Now, in theory 88% approval amongst Republicans could be a problem in a 55% District because that comes out to about 48% of the vote counting independents who voted for Bush. I’d say it’s safe to say that John Laesch isn’t going to light the District on fire so I don’t see any serious threat since Laesch has low name recognition.

Democrats should consider a strong candidate for the special election to replace Hastert if he resigns or for next cycle when he retires, however. One likely candidate is Chris Lauzen and given his thin skin, he’d be a good target if he were to make it through the primary. On the other hand, he will face competion for the seat so that’s a factor in attracting a quality candidate.