Public Policy Polling is reporting that after trailing slightly for a while Republican Mark Kirk has pulled out in a slight lead over his Democratic opponent, Alexi Giannoulias:
The Illinois Senate race continues to be very close, but because Mark Kirk is doing a better job of consolidating his base than Alexi Giannoulias is he’s taken a small lead after trailing by 2 points on PPP’s previous two polls of the race. Kirk is ahead 40-36 with Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones at 8% and Libertarian Mike Labno geting 3%.
Our August poll found Kirk winning 74% of Republicans and Giannoulias getting 72% of Democrats. Now Kirk has expanded his support from his own party to 79% while Giannoulias’ support from his has declined to 68%. Kirk is getting 9% of the Democratic vote while only 2% of Republicans are planning to vote for Giannoulias. Kirk’s double digit lead with independents persists at 41-27.
These are two terrible candidates. The only target that Kirk is certain to hit is his own foot and if Democrats had gone out with the specific intent of finding the worst possible candidates for this year’s race, Alexi Giannoulias would have made a great pick. He’s got nearly everything wrong with him: banker, failed bank, connections with shady figures, political insider, no ballot appeal.
However, this is a mid-term election in a year in which the expected Republican tailwind is assuming gale-force proportions all over the Midwest. Unless there’s some other distressing Kirk revelation, I expect him to eke out a narrow victory.
I agree with your prediction.
The race I’m most interesting in watching is the IL-17th Congressional (Phil Hare’s seat). You’ve asked before where are the Republican pick-up seats with all of the gerrymandering. Well, this seat is gerrymandered to be an uncontested Democratic seat and Hare’s behind in the single poll that’s out there to a Tea Party candidate.
To me this suggests that seats built primarily around the populist wing of the Democratic party are vulnerable, particularly if there is low African-American turnout. And all of this immigration stuff isn’t helping Hare either.