Well, this is a little surprising, I have to admit. The latest Rasmussen poll shows Obama's lead over McCain in his home state is only 50%-37%. Now sure, that's still a double-digit lead. And I doubt anyone thinks Obama won't easily win Illinois.
But I had thought he'd at least get above 50% in his home state. I mean, running against Alan Keyes, Obama got 70% of the vote in Illinois for Senate! (Granted, with leaners included, Obama leads McCain 52%-41%.)
FWIW, this is a state where John Kerry got 54.82% of the vote in 2004, and Gore got 54.60% in 2000.
The other trends in this state would seem to strongly favor Obama.
Most (56%) Illinois voters see getting the troops home from Iraq as more important than winning the war while 35% disagree and think winning the war is more important.
....
President George W. Bush earns good or excellent ratings from just 26% of voters in Illinois, while 57% say he is doing a poor job. Nationally, Bush approval ratings continue to hit record lows.
So while 57% of Illinoisians.... Illinoisites... Illini(?) think Bush is doing a poor job, and not just a "fair" job (which Rasmussen includes as an option), there's still a certain chunk of those people who aren't supporting their own Senator in the Presidential race.
BTW, in the Senate race, Rasmussen shows Dick Durbin up by a whopping 61%-27% over some Republican named Steve Sauerberg. 61%. Now that's the kind of number I'd like to see Obama get closer to in his own home state. (Kerry got 61.94% in Massachusetts in 2004.)
Update: What poblano says:
On the one hand, this result would not be completely shocking: I've generally shown the home-state advantage to be worth something like 6-7 points, and if you took Obama's roughly 4 point margin in Ohio and Michigan and added that cushion to it, you'd get right at this number. But Illinois has polled substantially better than Ohio and Michigan in the last couple of cycles for the Democrat. I think, certainly, we can take the over on that 11-point number; on the ground here in Chicago, I haven't detected any kind of organic, anti-Obama sentiment. But there may be something to the notion that a candidate gets an extra bit of scrutiny from his home state at different stages of the process, particularly at the point where he ceases to become their senator and instead instead the nation's candidate.
Now, I'm not fretting or wringing my hands over this poll at all. I'm just saying I was a bit surprised that Obama's lead wasn't larger.