There's not a lot that a state legislative candidate can do when his or her party's presidential nominee starts to tank.

The presidential race drives turnout to the point where down-ballot candidates must struggle mightily to rise above the noise and get their messages heard by distracted voters.

And because there are no statewide races in Illinois this year, that means there are no truly high-profile campaigns to "break up" any presidential advantage or momentum. Congressional races are all that state legislators have now to cushion the blow from the top, and down-ballot candidates are increasingly pinning their hopes on those contests.

I have two poll results to tell you about today. One is about an alleged criminal; the other is about a proven liar.

Expelled state Representative Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) is leading his only opponent by 38 points and is close to the 50 percent he'll need to reclaim his seat.

According to a poll of 556 likely voters conducted September 12 by We Ask America, Smith is crushing third-party candidate Lance Tyson 48-9. The poll has a margin of error of 4.15 percent.

Smith was expelled from the House in August, months after his federal indictment for allegedly accepting a $7,000 cash bribe. He's still on the ballot, though, and faces Lance Tyson, who was picked to run by the district's Democratic ward committeemen.

Tyson loaned his campaign more than $26,000 last week after I told my subscribers about this poll. That's most of what he's raised so far.

On the eve of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, a statewide poll showed the native son was leading his Republican opponent by 17 percentage points here.

The poll of 1,382 likely Illinois voters was taken September 5 by We Ask America. It had Obama at 54 percent to Mitt Romney's 37 percent. Another 3.33 percent said they'd be voting for an unnamed third-party candidate, and 6 percent were undecided.

That's way below where Obama was four years ago, when he won Illinois with 62 percent of the vote.

"We've got to activate the taxpayers of Illinois," Governor Pat Quinn told reporters after his legislative special session failed to move any sort of pension reform forward. He promised to lead a "grassroots" effort to push legislators to pass a reform bill.

But will the voters actually listen to him? A recent poll conducted for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle found that 54 percent of the county's likely voters disapprove of Quinn's handling of the public-employee-pension issue. Just 29 percent approved.

Keep in mind: This is Cook County we're talking about. It leans strongly Democratic. Quinn's job-approval numbers are radically upside-down throughout the state, but 54 percent of Cook County voters still disapprove of how he's doing his job in office. So if he's getting this sort of pension-issue disapproval in Cook, of all places, it's most likely a whole lot worse elsewhere.