Friday, March 26, 2010

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

Rep Melissa Bean
Democrat Rep. Melissa Bean
Walsh Family
Republican Joe Walsh & His Family













IL-8
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/

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%
We Ask America Poll Results on 3/18/10

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

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%
Last 3 Election Results

Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Illinois 8
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%