Poll: 51% in Illinois Oppose Prison for Guantanamo Terrorists In Their State

If the nightmare election of 2008 never happened and Barack Obama was still the junior senator from Illinois, could we win re-election in that state? Doubtful.

From Rasmussen Reports:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Illinois voters oppose relocating some suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba to a prison in their state.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 39% of voters in the state favor housing the prisoners at the Thomson Correctional Center, a near-empty maximum security facility 150 miles west of Chicago. Ten percent (10%) are not sure.

In August, there were similar findings in Michigan. Half of that state's voters (50%) were opposed to a proposal to house inmates from Guantanamo at a soon-to-be-closed state prison 145 miles north of Detroit. Thirty-nine percent (39%) favored the plan.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters nationally opposed housing Guantanamo prisoners in Michigan. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat, supports selling the prison to the federal government for use as part of the president's plan to close the prison camp for terrorists in Cuba. A joint state legislative committee is holding a public hearing on the proposal on Dec. 22, and Quinn said this week he expects a decision "very soon."

Read more at Rasmussen Reports.