Matt Dietrich
Sep 5, 2014

Earlier this week, a Reboot Illinois poll showed Bruce Rauner with an 8-point lead over Gov. Pat Quinn.

A new Reboot Illinois shows that Rauner’s lead is considerably smaller when poll participants are asked whether they consider Rauner or Quinn more trustworthy.

In the poll, conducted Sept. 3 and 4 among 2,110 likely voters by We Ask America, respondents found Rauner to be more trustworthy by a margin of just over 3 percentage points – 43.6 percent for Rauner,  40.5 percent for Quinn.

But 16 percent of respondents were undecided. That’s significantly higher than the 10-percent undecided response from Tuesday’s poll, which asked participants for whom they would vote if the election were today.

The “trustworthy” poll comes at a time when both Quinn and Rauner are doing damage control on multiple issues that have raised questions about their actions and intentions.

Gov. Pat Quinn is facing a torrent of questions about the handling of $54.5 million in taxpayer money for his 2010 Neighborhood Recovery Initiative anti-violence program.

In recent weeks, his administration has been accused of breaking patronage hiring rules at the Illinois Department of Transportation. Those accusations led Quinn to fire 58 employees believed to been hired for their connections rather than their qualifications.

Meanwhile, Rauner has spent the last two weeks trying to re-articulate his stance on the Illinois minimum wage. He advocated reducing the minimum wage at a candidate forum last December, but also has said he’d consider eliminating it and then backed away from that position when his remarks got widespread attention.

He told the Illinois Farm Bureau that Illinois needs to invest “billions of dollars” in construction projects, but advocates a tax plan will leave the state with billions less in its budget.

Both candidates have been persistent in turning virtually any question on any topic into their own campaign talking points. For Rauner, it means portraying Quinn as ineffective and, lately, a practitioner of illegal patronage hiring. For Quinn, it means portraying Rauner as too rich to understand the needs of people “who live paycheck-to-paycheck.”

Quinn also has repeatedly attacked Rauner for his former firm’s use of accounts in the Cayman Islands to deposit funds and avoid some tax liability, though state pension funds also make use of the Cayman Islands.

The trustworthy poll results seem to indicate all that mud is dirtying both candidates.

The automated poll has a margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points, with 30 percent of responses from cell phone contacts. Party breakdown of poll participants is 26.35 percent Republicans, 37.37 percent Democrats and 36.28 percent independents.

Here’s a breakdown of results by gender, party and location of respondents. Scroll down for interactive charts in each category.

Matthew Dietrich is Reboot’s executive editor. An award-winning journalist, Dietrich is the former editorial page editor of the State Journal Register in Springfield. He believes in holding our politicians accountable. Read Dietrich’s take on the leadership vacuum that sent Illinois sinking. You can find Reboot on Facebook and on Twitter @rebootillinois.