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.”

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Fifty-eight percent (58%) of female voters think housing Guantanamo prisoners at the Thomson facility is a bad idea, but a plurality (49%) of men disagrees.

Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans and 57% of voters not affiliated with either major party are against moving the prisoners to their state. Forty-nine percent (49%) of Democrats support the proposal, while 37% are against it.

Congressman Mark Kirk, the leading GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate next year, is one who opposes the idea. Kirk now trails Democratic State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias by a few points in the latest Rasmussen Reports polling on Illinois’ 2010 Senate race.

A plurality (48%) of voters nationwide now think it’s unlikely that the Guantanamo prison for suspected terrorists will be closed by January as the president has repeatedly vowed. When the president announced his decision to close the Guantanamo facility just after taking office, voters were evenly divided, but public support has been trending away from closing the prison camp ever since.

While the president believes the prison camp established by his predecessor, George W. Bush, weakened national security, only 30% of Americans agree.

Part of the president’s plan includes trying suspected terrorists in U.S. civilian courts rather than before military tribunals at Guatanamo. Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City. Opposition is even higher among residents of New York State.

Forty-two percent (42%) of voters now say the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror, up eight points from late October which had marked a three-year low. But even the new number is still down 13 points from the beginning of the year.

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