Voters All Pouty About Gubernatorial Candidates

By Olivia Leigh in News on Oct 16, 2006 4:00PM

When Chicagoist moved to the city, we immediately went on a tireless search for our beloved Thai dish, panang curry. Several take-out orders and many Thai iced teas later, we were still disappointed, only managing to find one that was not as terrible as the others, but still by no means “very good.”

Unfortunately, many Illinois voters seem to be settling for “not very good,” but on a considerably more important topic than curries. According to a new Tribune/WGN poll, 51 percent of voters are dissatisfied with the major candidate selection.

Of the 600 voters polled, 43 percent supported Blagojevich, and Topinka had 29 percent. Nine percent selected Green Party candidate Rich Whitney, 17 percent of voters were still undecided, and two percent named write-in candidates.

In bad news for Blago, the majority of those polled voiced concerns about his corruption-beleaguered administration, even before the recent Rezko news was fully announced. Sixty-four percent of those polled said he has failed to keep the promise to end corrupt "business as usual", and 60 percent said that corruption in the governor’s administration is the same as previous ones.

Things were even worse for our [least] favorite redhead, with fewer than half of Republicans saying they had a favorable opinion of her, and 65 percent saying they were dissatisfied with the governor selections on the ballot. Sorry, Judy, but when even the Republicans don’t like you, chances are slim that your name will be proclaimed on Election Day.

The Green Party candidate (yes, another one does exist!) Rich Whitney was the only individual who had increased in popularity since the last poll a month ago, benefiting from increasing wariness of the two major candidates. Although nine percent is admittedly small, the poll revealed that only one-third of the voters had heard of Whitney, and 25 percent said they had no opinion upon which to judge him.

Chicagoist has long been a fan of independent/Green/non-status-quo candidates, and we only wish Whitney had been able to get out the word a little better. At least for the entertainment value of seeing the major candidates actually have to answer tough questions other than who is most like George Ryan, a race in which most Illinois voters were aware another choice existed would certainly have been preferable to us, and we imagine to you, the voters, as well.

Image from Flickr user Yogi.