The Progressive Midwesterner

Based on recent pre-election opinion polling in the gubernatorial race here in Illinois, Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker has a commanding lead over Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, with Pritzker close to majority support in Illinois (only a plurality of the vote is needed to win election to the governor's office in Illinois). Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU Carbondale) has a pre-election opinion polling operation that focuses on polling high-profile Illinois electoral races, such as races for governor, and a recent poll that they conducted had Pritzker with a commanding, but not prohibitive, lead in this year's gubernatorial race : The poll was conducted September 24-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage point for the entire sample. The poll covered a sample of 1,001 registered voters. The election analysis presented here is based on 715 likely voters. The margin of error for likely voters is 3.7 percentage points. When asked, “If th...

Kylie Oversen, the Democratic-Nonpartisan League nominee in this year's election for the office of Tax Commissioner of North Dakota, now has a full campaign website for her bid for tax commissioner. On the "issues" page of her website, Kylie pointed out how Republicans in North Dakota have left North Dakotans with a higher property tax burden: During the last legislative session, the legislative and executive branches eliminated the 12% property tax buydown and cut $115 million from property tax relief. After promises have been repeatedly broken by Republican leadership, Kylie is committed to working with leaders at all levels of government and on both sides of the aisle to create a plan for meaningful, lasting property tax reform. Since I'm not from North Dakota, I had to do some online research about North Dakota property tax policy to understand what the property tax buydown that Kylie was referring to, and I found an article on the website of The Bismarck Tr...