Evening polls: Wisconsin trending blue

Wisconsin has looked uncharacteristically blue in presidential polls of the past few months, and the latest SUSA installment confirms that Democrats has a head-start in the general election. And unlike yesterday's Iowa poll in which Clinton ran significantly behind Obama when matched-up against Republicans, she appears slightly more electable here, one more reminder that electability is very hard to determine among Democrats.

• John McCain is, as is so often the case, the strongest Republican. He only trails Clinton 47% to 45%, and is the only Republican to win any match-up, leading Obama 47% to 43%.
• Clinton has good leads against the other candidates: 49% to 42% against Rudy Giuliani, 53% to 37% against Mitt Romney, and 53% to 36% against Mike Huckabee.
• Obama leads Rudy 47% to 42%, Romney 50% to 38%, and Huckabee 52% to 35%.

For comparison, here is SUSA's poll from last month. Many states that have been polled have shown a tight race in 2008 regardless of how partisan the state was in the past. Wisconsin was one of the tightest states in both 2000 and 2004, and Kerry's winning it was actually a bit of a surprise. But this might be part of a trend that states like Wisconsin and Minnesota are going back to their progressive roots -- look at the Klochubar-Kennedy Senate race of 2006.

• IL-14 starts off red

I was speculating yesterday as to how competitive IL-14 might be come the special election after Dennis Hastert resigns. My answer was that Democrats would have a good chance of making this competitive if the voting is on February 5th; without that surge of turnout, they might have trouble overcoming the district's Republican lean, especially with the GOP having strong candidates.

And today, a poll confirms that the GOP start slightly ahead. Republican candidate Jim Oberweis released an internal poll that has him leading Democrat Bill Foster 49% to 22%, John Laesch (the 2006 nominee) 47% to 27%, and Jotham Stein 47% to 20%. However, the primary looks very competitive between him and state Senator Chris Lauzen (with Oberweis up 41% to 37%). This confirms a Lauzen internal poll released two weeks ago that had the two Republicans at 38%.

Oberweis starts with a much higher name recognition, so let's see whether (1) the GOP primary gets nasty, for that could give an opening to Dems and (2) if the DCCC will be willing to make a serious play for the seat. For they might not get a chance for a long time... and Illinois has been good for Democrats in recent cycles.