The Poll

For those of you who love to use poll numbers to predict the demise of Governor Blagojevich, here are some poll numbers published in today's Bernie Shoenberg column. You can't have it both ways, friends. You can't acknowledge polls that you like and ignore those that you don't like. Andy Shaw also mentioned the poll in his piece on today's 5pm news. Click here then click "watch the video."

Bernard Schoenburg Column
Published Thursday, December 01, 2005

Pollster sees ‘room to grow’ for Brady vs. Topinka

Even though State Treasurer JUDY BAAR TOPINKA is in the lead in a poll taken for the rival gubernatorial primary campaign of state Sen. BILL BRADY, R-Bloomington, Brady is taking an optimistic view of the numbers.

In a poll of 600 registered voters statewide, interviewed Nov. 15-16 by McKeon & Associates of Joliet, Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH defeats each of four GOP candidates placed in head-to-head competition with him. And the numbers are similar. They show Democrat Blagojevich over Brady 40-29; over Topinka 40-31; over businessman JIM OBERWEIS 40-30; and over state Sen. STEVE RAUSCHENBERGER of Elgin 41-28.

Brady takes heart from the poll, which has a 5.1 percentage point margin of error on the general election numbers, because Topinka is better known.
“In my case,” Brady said, “having not run statewide and not being an identity in the mind of the voters, as we develop that, I’ll have a better opportunity to move my numbers.”
Brady said he got that idea from pollster MICHAEL McKEON. McKeon later told me that Topinka remains far from a household name in Illinois because only the very politically astute know the state treasurer.
“She’s a little bit defined, but not that much,” McKeon said. He said all the candidates will “present their stories” to the GOP primary voters, and in that contest, “it’s going to be the one who convinces the voters that they’re the one.” He did say that Brady, compared with Topinka, “has more room to grow.”

He also said Topinka “has created this illusion that she’s got more visibility than she does.”
Meanwhile, McKeon also did a poll of 551 likely GOP primary voters, including 151 people from the sample of 600 registered voters and an additional 400 people who said they would be voting in the Republican contest.

Of those 551, 30 percent were for Topinka; 12 percent for Oberweis; 10 percent for Brady; 8 percent for Rauschenberger, and 4 percent for Chicago businessman RON GIDWITZ - who has already spent $2 million or more on advertising. The largest percentage - 36 percent - went to the “don’t know” category.

The GOP primary poll, which has a 5.3 percentage point margin of error, also found that 66 percent of those voters viewed themselves as pro-life, with 29 percent pro-choice; and 68 percent viewed themselves as conservative, 28 percent as moderate and 4 percent as liberal.
Polls, of course, are just snapshots in time. And things can change dramatically. But at least we now know some of the numbers generated for the Brady campaign.