[Bumped up from last night for visibility.]
* A new Tribune poll is not hugely surprising…
Faced with widespread voter dissatisfaction, embattled Cook County Board President Todd Stroger trails Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown and Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle in the race for the Democratic primary nomination, a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.
Brown had the support of 29 percent of likely Feb. 2 primary voters, ahead of Preckwinkle’s 20 percent, in the poll of 502 likely voters. Stroger received 14 percent and Terrence O’Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, had 11 percent.
But the survey found that 26 percent of primary voters are undecided in the race or for someone else — meaning plenty of room exists for the contest to become even more fluid in the post-holiday sprint to the ballot box. […]
O’Brien is the lone white candidate in the race, but the prospect of three African-American candidates splintering the black vote to enable him to win isn’t borne out in the survey.
What is surprising is that for the first time that I can recall, the Tribune has released its questions, toplines and some crosstabs. Click here to download.
Toni Preckwinkle already has a press release out…
We are exactly where we expected to be at this point in our campaign. We entered this race 11 months ago and have been building positive momentum since. We are confident that, as voters continue to hear Toni Preckwinkle’s message - her commitment to repeal the Stroger sales tax increase and bring real reform to County government, that we will win the only poll that matters - on election day.
Our own recent polling shows that Dorothy Brown had a 2:1 name recognition advantage. Yet polling shows even though voters know her, they are unconvinced she deserves a promotion.
The Trib poll’s name recognition advantage for Brown over Preckwinkle - 91 vs. 62- isn’t nearly as high as Preckwinkle claims in her own polling. However, those with either a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the two is about two-to-one for Brown - 56-30. O’Brien comes in last in the Trib poll at 51 percent name rec, while just 14 percent know enough about him to rate him…
And here are the Trib’s crosstabs on the head-to-heads…
Preckwinkle absolutely needs to raise some money to get her message out. Her campaign has done a good job of leaking negative research on Brown and O’Brien to the media, but she obviously needs to reinforce that with advertising.
O’Brien needs to up his name ID, and only lots of cash will do that.
This is one reason why the reformers’ hatred of campaign cash is so misguided. Incumbents are already well-known. Challengers have to establish themselves with voters, but nobody in the reform movement is talking about making TV and radio ads lots cheaper.
Data…
This Chicago Tribune Poll is based on interviews of confirmed registered voters likely to vote in the February 2nd Cook County Democratic primary. Interviewing was conducted December 2nd to the 8th. The sample involved 502 Cook County Democratic primary voters, for a potential margin of error of 4.4% at the 95% level of confidence.