Excellent 7% Good 43% Fair 37% Poor 5% Undecided 8%
50% good/excellent numbers. Seems strange because his press has been relatively good. Overall, the big problem is the Collar Counties where he’s getting killed with only a 32% E/G rating. He’s actually not doing bad in Central and Southern Illinois.
Madigan for Governor.
I’d be interested to see a breakdown on Blago’s numbers. He’s almost universally reviled in Springfield for refusing to live in the Governor’s Mansion. That and his habit of tossing fat state contracts to contributors has made him very unpopular in the capitol city.
Check the link–it has the numbers by region and some other information.
Springfield cracks me up.
One of Blago’s most endearing attributes is staying in Chicago. Springfield is Lincoln’s greatest mistake.
“You’d have to shoot me to get me back to Springfield.” Abe Lincoln.
What makes him so much more popular in southern and central Illinois? Does he have good farm policy? Some sort of great rural policy I don’t know about? Do they care more about his prescription drug efforts?
I don’t know. It blew me away. I thought he’d be especially weak in Central Illinois. But he’s not. I don’t get it.
don’t believe media polls. He is hated South of I-80. That’s a fact, Jack er Archie.
I’ll believe it if you say you have contrary data–that seemed very strange in the downstate numbers.
2 ideas:
how many reasonably well contested state rep races are there in central illinois? If my local is any indication, the GOP is basically running against him more than their Dem rival (guilt by association I guess)- if there isn’t the same steady stream of hits on him, it would figure his negatives won’t be as high.
Or, as an alternate and slightly more probable explanation- what kind of media are what I’ll gently call his “foibles” getting in central and southern? Chicagoans are used to that kind of thing, so they don’t care and this kind of stuff does seem to make suburbanites cranky. If these things aren’t big stories south of 80- then fewer people have much bad to say about him.
note: i don’t think Lisa M. is in a good position to challenge G-Rod. It seems to me they have similar Chicago bases bridging liberals and organization people. Rod’s been beating up on Big Madigan so long it’d be easy for him to turn a primary into him versus Papa M, and he’d use that to run up a big downstate number on her, limit her suburban appeal and win.
My theory’s been that a primary challenger has to start downstate, work north and get labor backing to beat him- so a Dan Hynes seems more potentially viable. A Paul Vallas could make a suburban strategy work.
It all seems academic to me- he’s got a fat bankroll already.
Then there’s Pat Quinn, who’s crazy enough to at least try it.