Rich pointed out yesterday her internal polling is at odds with The Hill poll and her polling has her 4 points behind.
* Adam Kinzinger leads, but only by a small 45% to 41% margin. This is an extremely close race, and the momentum seems to be on Halvorson’s side after her strong early buy on Chicago broadcast television.
* Halvorson is getting movement with key subgroups. She leads with women and she leads with union households in one of the heaviest union districts in the country. Even though independents are breaking against Democrats in many districts, Halvorson and Kinzinger are in a virtual dead heat among them (40% Kinzinger / 37% Halvorson).
No incumbent wants to be 4 points down this close to the election, but it’s not nearly as bad as being down double digits. One of the criticisms of the Hill poll was that the voters claiming to have voted for McCain were much higher than the 2008 performance in the Districct and Obama voters’ much lower. That is a concern about a poll, but it’s also true that often retrospective reporting of who someone voted for can be wrong. Recall that Ross Perot was around 20 percent in 1992, but only 5 percent admitted that later. That said, Weller’s opponents had 41 percent for Tari Renner and 45 percent for John Pavich. Now take an incumbent who just ran and without major scandal she is not likely to be polling under those two even if you take an Obama bump into consideration (she outperformed Obama significantly though). This race is going to be tough, but it’s still a race.