January 2006

47% Approval

Research 2000 polled Illinois voters for the Post-Dispatch and other Lee papers like the Pantagraph with the Governor doing better than he has with the Survey USA polls and with a slightly less Democratic weighted sample.

Rich doesn’t think it’s as bad as the story makes it out to be, and I’d tend to agree.   In fact, it may be a sign of a increasing poll numbers. It’s always hard to compare polls this far out when who will vote is squishy, but his disapproval numbers are under 50% in this poll and below his approval numbers–that’s a good sign from the other numbers we’ve seen lately.  He’s vulnerable regardless, but if this poll is reasonably accurate, he’s in a better position than I thought.  That isn’t to say he’s home free, but it’s not the worst place to begin from when you are a good campaigner.  In the breakdowns, the independent numbers are better than the SurveyUSA results have been as well which really are a key for him to capture. 

Perhaps most importantly, his downstate numbers aren’t anything to brag about, but they aren’t as far in the toilet as many would expect. 

Sample 800 Voters
The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus3.5 percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the ?true? figure would fall within that range if the entire population were sampled. The margin for error is higher for any subgroup, such as for
gender or party affiliation.

42% Approval

His numbers still suck, but the Governor is sucking less than he was in middle and late 2005,

42% Approval
but the problem still is
53% Disapproval

Good signs for him are that his African-American and Latino ratings are doing better both hitting 70% approval.

Bad news for Eisendrath, 62% approval amongst Democrats—that’s much better than Bob Holden was doing in Missouri when Claire McCaskill beat him. That isn’t necessarily good news for Blagojevich in the general, but it is something to build upon. His independent numbers are in the crapper with 31% approval. Partisan break down is Republican 25%, Democrat 43%, Independent 31%.

A bit low on the Republicans, though with the serious problems the party has, regular Republican voters might be claiming independent status.

What is fascinating to me is the comparison to Michigan–Michigan is less blue than Illinois, but Granholm has been pretty consistently around Blagojevich’s numbers for the last several months. Interestingly, she is considered a fairly safe bet for reelection even with crappy approval ratings. Some of that is she’s probably facing a bad Republican candidate, but the parallels are interesting for those who claim Blagojevich is toast.

I have many, many criticisms of the current Governor, his situation isn’t as dire as many predict. Certainly Topinka offers a particular challenge to him both on gender and choice. However, the rest of the Republican field is weak in a general election contest.

His numbers do make him vulnerable because they are bad for a sitting Governor, but the similar tracking with Michigan has to make one wonder if the larger political and economic climate in states that had heavy manufacturing as an important part of the economy aren’t facing similar challenges. While those of us who follow politics obsessively tend to try and pinpoint moves to particular instances, most voters don’t follow that closely what the Governor does from day to day. He is vulnerable, but his situation isn’t as dire as many like to think.

Zogby On-Line Poll

It’s on-line so who knows how accurate it is, though they do try to sample underrepresented groups.

Blagojevich: 39.7
Topinka: 38.7

+/- 2.9%

Blagojevich: 45.7%
Brady: 36.1%

I assume the Oberweis numbers are in the full pdf which I don’t have–if you do, I’d appreciate it if you could pass it along.

6th District Roundup

Jeff Berkowitz has Cegelis and Scott on Public Affairs Cinema

Via Rich

Roskam raised $380,000. That’ll be a fun report to go through.

Hiram says Lindy Scott is about to pull in $103,000 which is a good quarter with 20% spent at $80,000 on hand–good numbers assuming they are accurate along with interesting news about Lindy’s ground operation. At a minimum he beats expectations and will be taken seriously–the ground operation might be the thing to keep your eye on.

Duckworth makes Newsweek and gets the AFL-CIO endorsement.

My sense is Unite to Win might be more important in the District, but those on the ground can correct me. Either way it is a big endorsement.

Christine gets the Progressive Democrats of America Endorsement and a nice personal endorsement from Marci Kaptur of Ohio.

John Laesch running in IL-14 just got an endorsement as well.

Fair and Unfair criticism

In terms of Tammy Duckworth’s candidacy, I get the point that many are upset at Rahm’s role in the race and that’s fair game.

What I don’t get are people trying to turn an accomplished woman into a simple tool of Rahm Emanuel. Tom Roeser provides the most recent example:

Emanuel has crafted for Duckworth what he believes will be a winning issue format. While she has received a medical discharge from the service, since Emanuel took her under his wing, Duckworth has announced that she will stay in the Illinois National Guard and would be one of about a half dozen members of Congress serving in the Guard. Her life experience can be used for her trade policy: Her husband worked at two companies that outsourced jobs to other countries, prompting her to advocate a mildly protectionist stance.

Now comes what Emanuel believes is the coup de grace. She goes hard left on social policy. She is not only pro-abort but even opposes parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Opposing parental notification is a bummer in the district and represents an extreme position, but Emanuel needs to placate the district’s small but potent liberal Democratic base in order to neutralize Duckworth’s primary opponent, Christine Cegalis who sounds not unlike Democratic national chairman Howard Dean. Duckworth also supports embryonic stem cell research which, at Emanuel’s direction, she blurs into plain “stem cell” research. Bearing the imprint of her political Svengali, Duckworth talks blandly of not “substituting government for family when it comes to making personal medical decisions”-a coded reference to Terri Schiavo, another appeal to a base which hated the Schiavo intervention.

Keep it up. If she becomes the nominee a lot over voters in the 6th are going to take this sort of crap and start to see the underlying implication being made by Roeser and others that a woman couldn’t possibly be able to have her own positions so it’s all evil Rahm’s doing because he’s the big strong alpha male. That’ll work wonders with moderate suburban women.

Conventional Wisdom Is….The Attack on Washington is a Bad Thing

And the conventional wisdom is wrong. I’ve spent more than a few hours teeing off on the guy, but he’s a good campaigner and while his numbers are in the toilet, he found the institution with lower approval ratings headed by a Republican President with lower approval in Illinois than Rod has.

Running against Bush and the Republican Congress papers over problems within the party and puts Eisendrath in an uncomfortable position of responding with “I agree, but” (to his credit Eisendrath seems to have already moved around that trap with soundbites about how G-Rod’s criticisms of Bush are Eisendrath’s criticisms of Blagojevich).

Sure, it’s another bogeyman, but bogeymen work when their polling is below his own. Everyone decries negative campaigning, but people keep using it simply because it works.

It also sets up an uncomfortable position for a moderate Republican who wants to hold on to the Republican base that dearly loves Bush, but also wants to attract moderate swing voters who, in Illinois, increasingly dislike Bush. Any sort of attack on All Kids, environmental regulation, child care (an underreported portion of his speech) or the like gets to have the reply be, just like Bush and the Republican Congress…

For the Republican conservatives in Oberweis and Brady, they already buy into the ideology of the Republican Congress so the set-up there is obvious.

It’s good politics and if I were advising him, I’d tell him to do it. He’s never going to have an overwhelming approval rating between now and the election so setting himself up as the better alternative may well be enough. It will be if the Republican nominee is Oberweis, or by miracle Brady. Against Judy, it’ll be the most effective attack on her for a general election audience.

It does give Eisendrath the opening to argue he is both honest and stands for those things, but Eisendrath is pretty much a wild card at this point. Until he shows his hand concerning the money he’ll spend and how well he can quickly connect with voters in under two months, that is moot.

The Best Bit of the Speech

The Mercury restrictions. Jack Darin covered it over at the Sierra Club blog . Mercury pollution is a pretty straightforward problem of, if it costs more to remove it, then those using the power should pay more to remove it. The technology is there and doing it in short order makes a lot more sense than 2018. Frankly, if the specific plants can’t be retrofitted, it’s time to build new plants.

It also produced the best quote of recent weeks from Steve Rauschenberger:

“I like clean air, but…

And it didn’t get better in context:

….I’m not sure what he’s talking about is practical or affordable,

The question isn’t whether it is practical or affordable, but whether it is important to protect human health. Practical or affordable goes to methods to reach a goal, not what the goal should be. That is the basis of the Clean Air Act and the State of Illinois is clearly going to have to move ahead since Bush seems to think a twelve year phase in is reasonable.