GOP's Bill Brady Leads Unpopular Pat Quinn in Illinois Governor's Race

More than half of Illinois voters disapprove of the job that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is doing, so it is no surprise that Republican state Sen. Bill Brady, despite being lesser-known, is leading him by 39 percent to 30 percent in the governor's race, with 11 percent for Green Party candidate Rich Whitney, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted Aug. 14-15. Twenty percent are undecided. The margin of error is 4.1 points.

Fifty-three percent turn thumbs down on the performance of Quinn, who took over after Rod Blagojevich was ousted. Twenty-three percent approve of the job he is doing while 24 percent are not sure. Only 40 percent of his fellow Democrats approve of his performance.

Forty-five percent don't know enough about Brady to be sure of their opinion of him, a number that eclipses his favorables and unfavorables.

Brady gets much higher support from fellow Republicans at 80 percent than Quinn does from Democrats, at 60 percent. Part of the reason is that Whitney, a civil rights attorney who also ran for governor in 2006, gets 10 percent of the Democratic vote while only taking 5 percent from the Republicans. Brady also has a commanding lead among independents (26 percent of the sample), who support him over Quinn by a 40 percent to 15 percent margin with 19 percent for Whitney and 26 percent undecided.

However, PPP's Dean Debnam says Quinn "still has more room to improve than does Brady, who already has his party and independents locked up. . . . If Quinn can get his base off the fence to support him and then turn them out, he can eke out a victory in this blue state."

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