CHICAGO - The Rauner camp got bad news Saturday as the Chicago Tribune rolled out a poll putting incumbent Democrat Governor Pat Quinn leading by 11 points. While earlier in the week a Democrat insider poll showed Quinn up by three points, the Tribune's poll will be more difficult to shrug off.
The poll found Quinn at 48 percent support compared with 37 percent for Rauner, with 8 percent undecided. And 5 percent went to little-known Libertarian candidate Chad Grimm — support that likely would have gone to Rauner if Republican forces had been able to knock the Libertarian Party slate off the ballot.
The poll, conducted Sept. 3 through Friday by APC Research Inc., featured interviews on landlines and cellphones with 800 registered voters. It has an error margin of 3.5 percentage points and a confidence level of 95 percent. That means if it were possible to contact every likely voter registered in Illinois, it could be said with 95 percent certainty that the results would differ by no greater or less than 3.5 percent.
Helping fuel Quinn's early advantage was the poll's finding that 43 percent of voters identified themselves as Democrats while only 24 percent called themselves Republicans and 28 percent said they were independents. The partisan split is identical to a Tribune poll in fall 2008, when home state Democrat Barack Obama made his first bid for the White House, and also represents a high-water mark for Democrats in Illinois in a nonpresidential year since 1998.
The Tribune suggests Rauner will need to dump his failing campaign message - the question is, will he also be changing campaign staff?
