Talk Elections

Article. (http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/exclusive-poll-oberweis-gaining-durbin-us-senate-race/sun-08312014-1234pm)

Durbin (D)- 47.8%
Oberweis (R)- 40.5%
Hansen (L)- 4%
Unsure- 7.6%

> WAA
> decimals

Yea Durbin is in no danger.

According to WAA, Rauner has a better chance of winning than Durbin

Durbin will win comfortably.

Is WAA in Rassy mode?

This poll is bad news for Rauner actually, since it shows their sample is extremely skewed.

Dick Durbin and Pat Roberts seem kind of in the same boat.  Polling pretty weakly despite being in a strongly partisan state due to bad effects from the current, unpopular governors. 

Both should win though....

In 2012, We Ask America had Jason Plummer defeating Bill Enyart 45-34. Enyart won 51-42. They also had Rodney Davis defeating David Gill 47-38 when Davis just barely beat him by less than a point. Finally, their poll showed Jesse Jackson Jr. only leading Debbie Halvorson 54-32 (final result was 71-28). Their track record isn't great, so I'll take this with a grain of salt.

Durbin will win 8-10 pts. The very worst by 6 but not in any real danger yet.

Junk poll.

I'm happy to see this because I know I can disregard WAA from now on. (Weren't they showing massive Rauener leads?)

Yeah. Any WAA Illinois poll is crap.

DURBIN UNDER 50!!!!!!!1!!1       TOSSUP/TILT R!!!!1!!1!!

Shut the  up, seriously.

I'm okay thanks.

Dems in Illinois have been worried about Quinn dragging the ticket down for a while.  This is evidence of that. 

I'd rather have Oberweis than Rauner win, anyway.

Durbin will hang on, at worst by six. Speaker Madigan should have forced a competetive primary, who is also state Dem chair, to force Quinn out.

Wow. This KCDem posted is like cancer. Except worse.

Considering all recent polling has shown Durbin up in the high single-digits, it's fair to say that Durbin is most likely up in the high single-digits. He's still quite favored.

I wonder how Republicans will do in House seats in Illinois this year. Dold looks like a definite favorite, and I think Bost's and Schilling's chances, especially the former's, aren't too bad either.

Considering the only "recent polling" is this and YouGov, I'll take that with a pillar of salt.

Oh, and despite YouGov showing Durbin with around the same lead as WAA, they show Rauner doing about ten points worse. So even these polls aren't consistent with each other.

WAA is always bad and Republican-leaning.

Even if you don't like the pollster (and remember this is being commissioned by the more left-leaning paper of the big Chicago dailies) consider that WAA had Durbin up by 15 in late July and about the same double digit spread in June. As Silver has sometimes noted a poll can be useful for seeing trends even if there is a house bias. This also marks the first poll with the Libertarian listed as the only other option since the ballot challenges have ended.

At all levels there's a strong anti-incumbent mood in IL, and it has been intensifying this summer. It's strongest against those with long tenures in office, driven by the year-long attention on the term limits initiative. Durbin's money is likely to keep him up despite the mood of the voters, but I won't be surprised to see this as his closest race yet.

WAA's track record in Illinois is execrable. But as you said, I can certainly see any race where the Dem had an unassailable lead earlier in the year, tighten up by 8 points when people tune in and Republicans coalesce behind their candidate, in particular in a year where Dems are not doing well nationally.

That's not entirely true. On 2012 presidential polling they were right in the middle of the pack by 538's analysis.

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Yeah, in other states they might not be bad, but in Illinois, they're trash.

Obviously it's going to be closer than expected, but Oberweis is not within striking distance.

Google the words "straw-man argument".

Four weeks before Election Day on October 2012, they had Tammy Duckworth, Bill Enyart, Brad Schneider, and Bill Foster all losing narrowly in Illinois, and Cheri Bustos ahead by a fraction (she won by 6.6 points).

A few days before Election Day, they adjusted their numbers to get a lot closer to the final on most of the races although they still had Schneider losing and flipped Bustos to losing by 2 points.

Regardless of how they did on Obama-Romney, Nate Silver said that WAA has a Republican house effect. Search here: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/calculating-house-effects-of-polling-firms/

Google the words: sarcasm and IQ.

That was before the 2012 election though.  House effects change every cycle.  That being said, I'd probably peg WAA as a bit R-leaning, but I'd say this:  I don't consider themselves particularly precise (or particularly accurate), so bias is less important than average error here. 

I still maintain that Oberweis is in high single digits/low double digits territory at this point, because of Quinn's unpopularity.