Romney Up Big In Illinois
According to the final Public Policy Polling poll, Mitt Romney looks to be headed to a big victory in Illinois on Tuesday:
Mitt Romney is headed for a blowout victory in Illinois on Tuesday. He leads with 45% to 30% for Rick Santorum, 12% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul.
Romney’s particularly strong among voters who live in suburban areas (50-29) and with those who live in urban areas (46-23). But he’s even running slightly ahead of Santorum, 38-36, with folks who identify as living in rural parts and that strength with a group of voters he hasn’t tended to do that well with is why he’s looking at such a lopsided margin of victory.
Romney tends to win moderates in most states and Santorum usually win voters describing themselves as ‘very conservative.’ The swing group in the Republican electorate is those identifying as just ‘somewhat conservative.’ Romney is winning those folks by a whooping 60-20 margin in Illinois. Romney’s also benefiting from a 52-28 advantage with seniors.
We’ve tended to find Santorum a lot more popular with voters even in states that Romney has won over the last six weeks, but that’s not the case in Illinois. Romney’s favorability is 57/34, about par for the course of where we’ve found him this year. Santorum’s at only 55/36, much worse numbers than we’ve seen for him most places in the last couple months, and suggesting that GOP voters are starting to sour on him a little bit.
There’s hasn’t been a lot of polling in Illinois, but these numbers are largely consistent with the numbers we have seen this week from Rasmussen and in a p0ll conducted by the Fox affiliate in Chicago. Assuming that the numbers hold up, then Romney stands to garner a sizable majority of the state’s 69 delegates, thus putting this contest even further out of reach for his opponents. Of course, Rick Santorum is already behind the gun there given the fact that he failed to file delegate slates in four of Illinois Congressional Districts, meaning that he is actually only contesting for 44 of the 69 possible delegates at the most, and would be likely to win no more that about 20 out of that in any case. Of course, don’t expect a Romney victory to close the door on this race.
IOKIYR
@PJ: That story sounds like B.S. The problem for the candidates was getting enough signatures in each Congressional District, many of which are heavily Democratic. Two of the districts that Santorum failed to file for are the two most Democratic in the State. If the campaigns relied in part on paying outside signature collectors, the assumption would be that some of them are probably bad, and a challenge would be filed based upon the margin for error, not based upon some advance knowledge.
Most likely, they dropped the challenge most likely because it would have entailed a waste of resources, and potential court challenges. Nobody will agree their challenges were not in good faith.
And this part of the story is just silly:
Um, that’s how Obama won his first election, he successfully challenged a more popular opponent’s signatures. That’s the traditional Illinois policy, Democrat and Republican.
Interesting side-note, PPP asked the likely Illinois Republican primary voters, some of the questions we suspected were only being asked in the Deep South:
Interracial marriage should be legal (75%) versus should be illegal (16%)
A majority aren’t sure Obama is a Christian, a plurality believe he’s Muslim;
Even split on whether Obama was born in the U.S. (36% to 36%)
Slightly more do not believe in evolution (43%) versus do believe (41%)
More impotantly, they tend to be “George Will” Cubs fans:
Cubs ……………………………………………………… 37%
White Sox ………………………………………………. 20%
Cardinals……………………………………………….. 22%
Not a fan of any of these teams …………….. 21%
When you consider SuperPAC money Romney is spending $26.14 per vote, or over five times as much as Santorum’s $5.14.
Is there any wonder why he’s “inevitable”?
Will he be able to outspend Obama 5:1 in the general? And even if he does….will it be enough to overcome the worst favorable-unfavorable split in the last 3 decades?
So the poll is good news for Romney and bad news for Santorum. I’m not sure Gingrich and Paul even matter enough for the poll to be bad news for them.
Just got the Illinois robo-call from the cabal jewsandchristianstogether.org
I was shocked to learn that, among other things, “Romney supports the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he’s your kid’s teacher.”
Of course if my kids teacher has a second job as a drag queen at the Flamingo Lounge downtown I would expect that jact.org would support higher pay for teachers so he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself in such a tacky wardrobe.
@Hey Norm:
And 5:1 isn’t close to what’s happening in Illinois.