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.