We had yet another strange
polling surprise when Rasmussen, a national pollster, decided to take another
poll on the governor's race because its last one had been conducted just before
Tony Rezko's indictment.
As expected, Gov. Rod
Blagojevich's support dropped since his pal, confidante and mega fundraiser was
indicted by the feds. Blagojevich went from 49 percent in the pre-indictment
Rasmussen poll down to 44 percent a week later. But Judy Baar Topinka's backing
dropped even more, from 43 down to 36. Rod fell five and Judy fell seven. What
the heck?
One reasonable explanation
might be that incumbents always suffer during bad news and Blagojevich has
successfully pegged Topinka as an incumbent politician in voters' minds. That
multitude of "What's she thinking?" spots and the George Ryan ads
have certainly done the trick. So, when Rezko was indicted the voters who are
paying attention (GOP polling had awareness of the event at about 65 percent
less than a week afterwards) may have processed it as an indictment on the
system in general. And since polling shows that they despise Topinka even more
than they hate Blagojevich, she bore a greater brunt. Yeah, it's bizarre, but
probably true.
The polling we've seen the
past few months is some of the weirdest I've ever encountered.
SurveyUSA releases a
monthly tracking poll on the job approval rating of every governor in America.
October's survey found that Rod Blagojevich had the worst approval rating of
all Democratic governors and the fifth worst among all governors. Yet the
governor leads Topinka in every single poll.
A Glengariff Group poll
taken last week revealed that 51 percent of Illinoisans believe Blagojevich
knew about the Rezko corruption. Just 25 percent said he didn't know. The same
poll had Blagojevich ahead of Topinka by nine points (39-30).
Voters just don't like
either candidate. A Tribune poll taken before Rezko's indictment found that
over half the voters said they were dissatisfied with their choice.
Rasmussen found, three
weeks before the election, that less than half of the voters had solidly made
up their mind about the governor's race. A mere 24 percent said they were
certain to vote for Blagojevich, while 22 percent said they were certain to vote
for Topinka. Nobody said they were certain to vote for Green Party candidate
Rich Whitney.
The closest we've probably
ever come to a situation when both candidates were terribly unpopular was the
2002 Lisa Madigan vs. Joe Birkett attorney general race. At least we thought at
the time that they were unpopular.
Lisa Madigan's unfavorable
rating topped out at around 45 percent, which was considered monstrously high
back then and believed to be an impossible obstacle to victory. When those poll
results came in a few weeks before election day the Madigan campaign panicked
and a huge split developed between those who wanted to go totally positive and
those who wanted to stay completely negative. The negatives won out, although
Madigan did run a handful of positive TV ads at the very end. By comparison,
most polls have Topinka's and Blagojevich's unfavorables somewhere around 60
percent. We're in uncharted waters, folks.
It seems easy to predict a
Blagojevich victory because he's ahead in every poll, this state leans heavily
Democratic and Topinka has been successfully transformed by the governor's
media team from being a respected state elder into a George Ryan hack. But no
credible poll shows Blagojevich with enough votes to win, despite all the
positive TV ads he's running. His favorability and job approval ratings are so
bad that he hasn't been able to close the deal.
On the other hand,
Topinka's numbers are even worse. Usually we assume that the vast majority of
undecided voters will eventually break towards the challenger. In a
"normal" year, Topinka would have a decent shot at closing the gap.
But this isn't a normal year. The undecideds don't like her, either.
Lots of voters appear to
be mulling whether to cast their ballot for the Green Party candidate.
Normally, voters will change their mind at the end and go with an established
party candidate. But, like I said, this isn't a normal year. As a result, if
Topinka doesn't change the race's dynamics right now then Rich Whitney (and
Green Party treasurer candidate Dan Schlorff) might end up with a lot more
votes than most people think.
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Rich Miller also publishes
Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com