Rauner Leads By 10 In New Illinois Governor Poll

With five months to go until Election Day, we have our first comprehensive look at the race for Governor since the primary. Reboot Illinois and We Ask America have released the numbers and it's good news for Bruce Rauner:

Conducted June 10 and 11 by pollster We Ask America, the survey below contains responses from 1,075 registered voters on the broadest question of the election: “If the election for Illinois governor were held today, for whom would you vote?”
Among all respondents, Rauner registered a 10-point lead (47-37, with 16 percent undecided). But Quinn had a commanding lead in Chicago, where his huge showing in 2010 helped him claim victory by a margin of less than 1 percent.

Brian Kersey, Getty Images

Other interesting findings in the poll:

Rauner leads by 22 points among independents (50%-29%).
Rauner wins men by 20 points (53%-34%) and even has the support of Illinois women by 4 points (43%-39%). Thus the Democrats' push for the "birth control" ballot question in November.
Twice as many Democrats (16%) say they'll vote for Rauner than Republicans who say Quinn has their support (8%)
Pat Quinn has a huge lead in the city of Chicago (65%-18%). That's not a surprise. But Rauner has an 8-point lead in suburban Cook County (44%-36%) and crushes the incumbent in the collar counties (54%-31%) and downstate (59%-27%).

In my opinion, the most important of those numbers is the collar county support for Bruce Rauner. For those who do not know, the collar counties are the five that border on Cook, specifically DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will. Many argue Bill Brady lost to Pat Quinn in the 2010 race because he could not engage, attract, and/or rally those GOP voters.

If Rauner wins the collars by 23 points there might not be enough votes in all the Cook County cemeteries combined to hand Quinn the win.

Full numbers and info at Reboot Illinois.