Illinois 8th Congressional District

Many have asked us what they can do now to help elect Republicans in November. As a practical matter, we have to wait until the Republican candidate is chosen in a primary election. Fortunately, Illinois has already held a primary election and Texas has held the first round with any required runoff races to be held on April 13th. We will only look at races where we feel the Republican candidate has a decent chance of beating the Democrat incumbent.

Illinois has four competitive races against Democrat incumbents so we will look at one of those today:

Illinois 8 House District

Democrat Rep. Melissa Bean

Republican Joe Walsh & His Family

Illinois 8 House District

Representative Bean carried this district by a 21.44% margin in 2008 while McCain-Palin were losing by an 12.82% margin. The former Republican incumbent, Philip M. Crane, was beaten by her in 2004. He had represented this district since 1992. Rep. Bean has made the mistake of voting for Obama care twice even after being targeted by the National GOP for her vote the first time. This has moved her into range in the quite possible group for the Republicans to take this seat.

The Republican primary has already been held in Illinois so the Republican candidate is:

Joe Walsh (R) - Teacher, '96 Candidate & '98 State Rep. Candidate

His website is http://walshforcongress.com/

We Ask America Poll Results on 3/18/10

ILLINOIS 8	RESULTS
Sample size	827
Democrat Melissa Bean	37.61%
Green Party Bill Sheurer	3.87%
Republican Joe Walsh	38.33%
Unsure	20.19%

Ratings for This District

MARGIN	OBAMA	MARSTON	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG
21.84%	12.88%	D toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D

Last 3 Election Results

Nov 04, 2008	Melissa Bean(I) 179,444 60.72% Steve Greenberg 116,081 39.28%
Nov 07, 2006	Melissa Bean(I) 93,355 50.91% S. David McSweeney 80,720 44.02% Bill Scheurer 9,312 5.08%
Nov 02, 2004	Melissa Bean 139,792 51.70% Philip M. Crane(I) 130,601 48.30%

Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Illinois 8

tate	District	65 or Older	White	Black	Latino	HS Grad	Coll 4Yr	Median HH Income	Poverty Level
United States		16.7%	74.3%	12.3%	15.1%	84.5%	27.4%	52,175	13.2%
Illinois	8	12.3%	80.3%	4.0%	15.9%	89.8%	36.0%	75,522	6.5%