IL-Sen: Barack Obama, the next senator from Illinois

Apparently it won't even be close.

With 31 percent of precincts reporting, Obama had 61 percent and his closest rival, Dan Hynes, pinning his hopes on powerful ward leaders including his father, had 19 percent.

"We've got over half the vote in the city and the county-- Obama is just killing them," Cook County Clerk David Orr said.

Of the pollsters, SurveyUSA will come closest to calling this race.

On the Republican side, Jack Ryan was leading comfortably for the distinction of losing to Obama in November. Good. As more dirt from his sealed divorce decree leaks out, we'll see yet another Illinois GOoPer named "Ryan" treat us to a public meltdown.

(To the locals -- is Obama a Cubs or White Sox fan? And I bet Ryan roots for the Cardinals!)

Visit Obama's website.

Update: Atrios runs with a good Obama bio.

Update II: Capitol Fax says:

NBC-5 TV in Chicago is reporting that unnamed Democrats have a copy of the sealed Jack Ryan documents and will release them before the general election.

Apparently, Democrats will wait until it is too late for Republicans to swap out Ryan with another Republican before releasing the files.

Either that, or Democrats are playing head games with the Republicans, bluffing them with info they actually do not have.