Shhhh! Don't mention Fitzgerald!! It goes against the Kirk kool-aid drinkers premise that you "have to" be an abortion-loving socialist to "win" in Illinois. Better to just pretend that "Obama's seat" has been RAT forever and now we're sooooo lucky to have the RINO turd in there.
>> He won despite a coordinated hit job push by the media and the Democrats for allegedly despite the fact he was caught lying about his military service. <<
Fixed it. The Chicago media was in the tank for Kirk. He is undoubtedly their favorite "Republican" in Illinois. Many of the Obama's top allies in the liberal media were rooting for Kirk this election not cycle, NOT Alexi. The Chicago Tribune's nonstop fawning coverage of Obama/Kirk being the biggest example. In fact, they refused to report on the news that Kirk was a pathelogical liar until the national media got wind of it and they were forced too. By the way, only 17% of GOP voters believed Kirk's military embellishments were just simple "mistakes" on his part. Are you one of the 17% who can't accept the fact Kirk flat out lied and got caught?
>> Exit polls by CNN showed that he outperformed the Republican nominee for governor, Bill Brady, by 3 points among Independents and 2 points among women. That ended being the difference in Kirk’s two point victory and Brady’s narrow loss. <<
The numbers on election day didn't match the data that had been out there for months (going all the way from the Feb. 2 primary to late October), showing Brady running 6-9 points AHEAD of Quinn, while Kirk was neck-and-neck with the most corrupt RAT on the ballot. Brady was polling ahead of "moderate" Mark Kirk with every demographic the GOP needed, including women and minorities. Brady also finished 50,000 votes AHEAD of Kirk on election day. There is no doubt in my mind that thousands of fradulent Quinn votes were manufactured in Crook County. Saying "the polls were wrong" doesn't excuse it. Sometimes there's been upsets where a candidate 2 points behind ends up winning on election day, but never by a margin this high. Quinn "won" areas where Brady had lawn signs all over and Quinn had virtually none.
>> The biggest difference was evident in the Chicago suburbs, where Kirk’s margins were much higher than Brady’s. <<
Again, this data didn't gel with the situation on the ground. The post-election spin is that Brady didn't do enough to win over the Crook County suburbs. Yet 2 weeks before the election, Brady was all over the Crook County burbs to the point where his downstate base was complaining that he had "forgotten" about them and the were being neglected. Kirk was AWOL in the suburbs. I've seen three Kirkbots here claim that Mark Kirk worked hard to win over suburban Crook County, but when they're confronted with the facts they admit they're from Kirk's OWN congressional district and the places they saw Kirk were towns in his district. 90% of suburban Crook County is outside the 10th District, and the demographics within Kirk's district are very different from the "average" suburbanite in Chicagoland (Kirk's district is heavily WASP, Jewish, upper-class, ivy-league, and military). Brady made an effort to shake hands with thousands of suburban voters face-to-face, while Kirk was invisible to Chicagoland voters unless they lived in areas he felt "comfortable" campaigning like Northbrook or Wilmette.
The "Brady scared away moderate suburban moms by being too darned socially conservative" line doesn't gel with the facts, either. Again, if you look outside the little bubble of the 10th district, you'll see plenty of unbashedly pro-life and pro-family candidates won handily in the Crook County suburbs. Indeed, State Senator Dan Rutherford holds the same views as Bill Brady and he was just elected as State Treasurer (mainly because the combine was so focused on manufacturing Quinn votes that they failed to notice Rutherford's numbers and he slipped by) The Dems who voted for Obamacare went down in flames. Even looking at the numbers, commie RATs in "safe" districts (like Bobby Rush) LOST the suburban chunk of their districts to unapologetic conservative opponents. The one Dem running for federal office that won re-election easily in the 'burbs was Congressman Lipinski, who is 100% pro-life and opposed Obamacare because it funded abortion. Why did the "suburban females" not all turn out against Lipinski's "scary" pro-life agenda and vote for his "moderate" Republican opponent who took a middle-of-the-road stance on abortion? He was on the same ballot as Brady. The "Kirk won cuz suburbanites love abortion and gay marriage" line just doesn't hold up to the facts.
You are wrong on multiple counts, most notably the overall vote totals for Kirk and Brady. Kirk totaled 1,765,594 votes while Brady finished with 1,702,399 votes. Those pesky 60,000 or so votes made the difference between Kirk winning and Brady losing. As for the Chicago suburbs, look at Lake county. Brady won it by about 15,000 votes (50-42%), while Kirk won it by 36,000 votes (57-39%). Kirk also outperformed Brady in Kane and Will counties by about 7,000 total votes. The Chicago suburbs gave Kirk almost 30,000 more votes than Brady. It’s ignorant to argue otherwise.