Polls Looking Kinda Bad For Blago

By vouchey in News on May 16, 2005 6:10PM

The Chicago Tribune released a poll on Saturday showing Governor Rod Blagojevich's approval ratings at a bottom-scraping 35% among 1,200 voters polled across Illinois. The poll results, conducted between May 5-10, came only days after the Governor's proposed campaign finance reform took a dive in the General Assembly. And on same day as the poll release, Saturday, news came that Attorney General Lisa Madigan served Alderman Dick Mell (33rd) and the governor's office with subpoenas for a grand jury investigation. Mell confirmed the report, but the governor's office would neither confirm or deny the report.

What's interesting about the Tribune poll of 1,200 people, conducted by Market Shares Corporation, is that the results are almost the same as Survey USA's poll of 600 people conducted at about the same time. Survey USA shows a 36% approval rating, and a 54% disapproval rating, with the remaining unsure. And then there's potential Republican challenger Judy Baar Topinka's March poll showing 47% want a new governor, versus 40% want to keep him.

But voters tend to change their minds as they get closer to the voting booth, and unless posed with a clear, well-defined choice, voters tend to like change. Remember Howard Dean?