Take heed and hope from this!

CHICAGO (CBS 2) The presidential election is just 48 days away now, and
according to an exclusive new poll of Illinois voters, George W. Bush and
John
Kerry could be in a virtual dead heat.The turn in this election tide
could set
up a political stunner. Illinois is a Democratic powerhouse in
national
elections, and John Kerry does maintain a small lead in our
exclusive CBS 2
poll, but President Bush appears to be gaining support among
voters.Illinois no
longer looks like a sure thing for Democrat John Kerry.
His once 13 percentage
point lead is now down to four points. That's exactly
our survey's margin of
accuracy, meaning the contest could be a dead-heat.
There are signs galore at a
Republican office in New Trier Township. Workers
say they're sensing a new
enthusiasm for the Bush-Cheney ticket in an area
with lots of swing voters --
swing voters who've chosen more and more
Democrats in recent years. Some top
Republicans still fear Bush could lose
these voters, but others are expressing
new confidence.“I'm convinced he's
gonna win Illinois. I really believe that.
And I know that's a frightful
prospect for the Democrats, but just look at the
numbers,” said GOP
Committeeman T. Tolbert Chisum.The numbers in our exclusive
CBS 2/Newsradio
780 poll put Kerry at 49 percent and Bush at 45 percent.“Well, I
don't think
there are any surprises here in truth, because you have the
cumulative
impact of being off the air for five weeks, during which time the
Kerry
campaign was bombarded by the negative ads from the Swift Boat Veterans
for
Truth, who were not telling the truth,” said Avis Lavelle with the
Kerry-Edwards campaign.Chisum said he believes the Swift Boat Veterans are
driving this surge in Illinois. “I think it's driving it in Illinois and I
think
it's driving it around the country,” he said.Democrats and Republicans
here
agree that Kerry's been badly wounded by his Swift Boat foes. Our
survey may
mean the Kerry Campaign will no longer be quite so confident
here. They haven't
even sent any yard signs or bumper stickers to IllinoisIn
the U.S. Senate race,
our survey found Republican Alan Keyes losing ground
to Barack Obama. The
Democrat had a 39 percentage point lead last month; now
it's 41 percentage
points.


A dead heat in Illionois is something the DNC couldn't have predicted. Illinois is a blue state through and through. Thanks mostly to people in Chicago, and lifelong straight-ticket Democrats. It's those straight-ticket people who are starting to realize what it means to vote for anyone with that big D after their name, they are beginning to see which party has their best interest at heart.

Now if we can only convince those pesky corpses to stop voting, we may just take this state back from the moonbats among us.