WHAT?  GOOD POLITICAL NEWS FROM ILLINOIS? – AT 7:44 A.M. ET:  When anything good politically comes out of Illinois, and especially when there's no indictment involved, we check it carefully to be sure it's not an internet hoax.  This seems real:

Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk holds a slight lead over Democratic challenger Alexi Giannoulias.
According to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey Kirk leads Giannoulias 41-37 percent, while Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones has nine-percent of the vote.

Nine-percent are undecided.

The last survey taken two weeks ago, the two frontrunners were tied at 45-percent apiece.

The survey talked to 750 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus four-percent.

COMMENT:  This is a midterm election coming up.  Those national polls are interesting, but midterms are won state by state, district by district, so we'll try to look more closely at these local polls.

Illinois is critical.  If things go our way in the Senate race there – the race for Mr. Obama's old seat – it may well mean that our side has a good shot at controlling the new Senate...with its power to confirm Supreme Court justices. 

The Illinois race has two defective candidates running against each other.  The Dem, Alexi Giannoulias, has a truckload of financial corruption issues.  The GOP candidate, the otherwise fine Congressman Mark Kirk, has fibbed about his military record.  Even with that, he's vastly preferable to Giannoulias.

Rasmussen polls among likely voters, which is the kind of poll we prefer here.  Kirk's lead is within the margin of error, so this race is hardly in the bag.

September 10, 2010