SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Pat Quinn may breeze through the Democratic gubernatorial primary without breaking a sweat, but a new poll Thursday showed he has some significant shoring up to do within his own party to be competitive this fall.
We Ask America, an independent polling subsidiary of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, found that 34 percent of Democratic voters surveyed said they would not vote to re-elect Quinn this fall, regardless of his opponent.
POLL: WE ASK AMERICA ON PAT QUINN
Another 16 percent were undecided to that question. Forty-nine percent said they would vote for Quinn.
“Now, political families fight, but when push comes to shove they tend to stick together,” said Gregg Durham, the CEO of We Ask America, which conducted an automated telephone poll of 1,162 likely Democratic voters Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Still, having a third of likely Democratic voters say they’re not sure they’ll vote for an incumbent governor is a swift kick in the patootie,” Durham said in a prepared statement.
“Will those miffed voters come back home in the fall? Probably. But depending on how deep voters’ walking dread goes, some may not vote at all and a handful may vote against Gov. Quinn because they’ve had it with his schtick.”
Quinn’s apparent problems within his own party are particularly pronounced downstate.
Forty-eight percent of Downstate Democrats surveyed said they would not vote to re-elect Quinn regardless of his opponent. That disapproval rating among Democrats stood at 34 percent in the collar counties.
Overall in the firm’s poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, nearly 57 percent of those surveyed said they approved of Quinn’s job performance. Thirty-one percent disapproved of it, and another 12 percent had no opinion.
A Quinn campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the new polling.
