November 3, 2002

HOW BAD THE GUBERNATORIALS?:

State poll puts Riley in front of Siegelman (TOM GORDON, 11/03/02, Birmingham News)
Republican Bob Riley has pulled ahead of incumbent Democrat Don Siegelman in the final days of their race for governor, according to a new statewide poll.

The survey of 600 registered voters who say they are likely to participate in Tuesday's election shows Riley leading Siegelman 47 percent to 39 percent. Eleven percent said they were undecided, and 3 percent said they would vote for Libertarian candidate John Sophocleus. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.

"Riley has pulled significantly ahead," said poll director Larry Powell. "He is poised to win the election."


The GOP is going to take some lumps in the governors' races on Tuesday (PA, MI, and IL look just gruesome), but in AL and SC they are looking likely to knock off incumbent Democrats, while in FL and TX they've opened up significant leads in races where Democrats hoped to embarrass the President. Meanwhile, there arequite a few races worth watching in solidly Democrat states--MA, MD, VT, MN, OR, and HI--all of which are still in play. Last, but certainly not least, there still seems to be almost no way that Bill Simon can win in CA, but it's also impossible to see how Gray Davis gets much over 50%. Perversely, the only thing stopping Bill Simon from winning this race is that not enough Republicans are supporting him.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 3, 2002 12:16 PM
Comments

I don't know what I'm going to do. Blagojevich is a typical Democrat, but Jim Ryan's got some serious problems as well (primarily involving faked evidence in some high profile cases, and not clearly uninvolved in George Ryan's little problems). It's just a wierd state - last time I voted Democratic because he (Poshard) was less corrupt and more conservative than George Ryan. Argh.

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 3, 2002 5:42 PM

Jim Ryan was the State's Prosecutor when we lived in Chicago and I always found him to be a decent guy.

Posted by: oj at November 3, 2002 8:17 PM

IL is definitely a weird state. I've followed the politics there for about 40 years. Blagovich's main problem is the eternal enmity of downstaters (just about everything outside of Cook County) for Chicago politicians. Not only that, but he's an irritating guy in person. Jim Ryan has the Republican disease -- waitng in line to run -- plus he gets confused with current Gov George Ryan, who is about as corrupt as any gov we've had since the days of Otto Kerner and Sec of State Paul Powell, of shoe box fame. I wouldn't be surprised to see low turnout ("a pox on both your houses") and a very close race, but I think Blagovich will pull it out.

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at November 3, 2002 10:52 PM

Can conservatives finally admit that the Republican governors we've had for the past few years have been miserable? They spend like Democrats. One likes to hope that it would have been worse with Dem governors, but sheesh.

Posted by: JW at November 4, 2002 12:04 AM
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