SurveyUSA was the only media pollster to poll today’s 03/08/08 special election in Illinois’ 14th Congressional Election. The contest was to fill the the seat left vacant when Republican Dennis Hastert, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, resigned. In general, special “stand-alone” elections (where there is nothing else on the ballot to attract voters to the polls besides the one race being contested) are difficult to survey, because turnout is usually low and almost always unpredictable. Worse, in this case: Illinois has never held a special election on a Saturday before. So there was nothing in the past to model. Against this backdrop, SurveyUSA is especially pleased with research we conducted exclusively for Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

Democratic polling firm Global Strategy Group, polling for the the Foster campaign, released a survey 02/25/08 that showed Foster 4 points ahead of Oberweis.

Republican polling firm McLaughlin & Associates, polling for the Oberweis campaign, released a poll 03/06/08 that showed Oberweis 2 points ahead of Foster.