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 in Illinois.

The poll of 1,382 likely Illinois voters was taken Wednesday by We Ask America. It had Obama at 54 percent to Mitt Romney’s 37 percent. An additional 3.3 percent said they would vote for a 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.