ILLINOIS PROSPECTS – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  We've been reporting on the Illinois primaries, held yesterday.  Gubernatorial races in both parties are still too close to call, meaning that Mayor Daley of Chicago may just have to find cartons of absentee ballots in that warehouse they have.

The attention is on the Senate race, probably the most fascinating since the Great Scott victory in Massachusetts, for Illinois will fill the seat held by President Obama, or at least assigned to him.  Legend has it that he didn't spend too much time sitting in it.

Congressman Mark Kirk is now the official GOP candidate.  Can Kirk pull it off in blue Illinois?   He's got a solid shot, as Real Clear Politics reports:

A quick comparison to 2004 tells the tale. Of course, 2004 was a presidential year that generated a lot more enthusiasm on the Democratic side, but it was also the last time Illinois had a competitive Senate primary on both sides.

In '04, turnout in the Republican Senate primary was 661,804. This year it was 736,137, an 11 percent increase. In '04 Barack Obama won his party's nomination taking 53% of the vote on turnout of 1,242,996. This year turnout in the Democratic primary was just 885,268, a decrease of nearly 30 percent.

So Republicans exit Tuesday's primary with an energized base and solid party support behind a moderate candidate, while Democrat enter the general election seemingly less enthusiastic and with a candidate with real political vulnerabilities.

Yeah, the Dem candidate is Alexi Giannoulias, the machine's choice, who enters the general election with a lot of ethical and financial questions hanging over him.

The bottom line is that in order for any Republican to win statewide in Illinois they must win a combination of conservative voters in the southern part of the state and moderate voters in the suburbs outside of Chicago. Kirk is well positioned to do the latter. Barring a third party "Tea Party" type candidate who might siphon off conservative support, if Kirk can win over energized Republican voters downstate he will have a very real chance of picking up Obama's seat in November.

COMMENT:  I doubt if the tea partiers will interfere.  If they're smart, they wouldn't want to interfere with the prospect of the GOP picking off the Obama seat.  Also, they don't have a ready candidate with Kirk's general popularity and name recognition. 

February 3, 2010