Progress Illinois

Another bit of good news has emerged for Democrat Dan Seals who, as we noted earlier, is riding high after a new Roll Call/Survey USA poll gave him an eight-point lead over 10th District GOP incumbent Mark Kirk.

Based on the new polling, the Swing State Project reports today that it's shifted the race from "Lean Republican" into the "Tossup" category.  Their explanation:

Of all the races that have been in SSP's "Lean Republican" column since March, this one's addition to the Tossup pile always seemed like an inevitable outcome -- it was just a matter of timing.

Two recently-released polls -- one from the DCCC and the other from R2K/DailyKos-- give GOP Rep. Mark Kirk a slight edge here, but both polls have the incumbent dangerously below 50%, leaving him vulnerable to a late Seals surge in a D+3 district that is set to deliver a big margin for Barack Obama in November. On top of it all, a new SurveyUSA poll is showing Seals leading by 52-44. While it's possible that that result is overstating things a bit, if there's one thing we've learned in the past few years, it's that Republicans are getting increasingly poorer at holding Dem-tilting districts. After all, let's not forget that Seals, a very talented candidate, outperformed his final internal polling during his 2006 race against Kirk by a full 15 points.