Talk Elections

I realize that Obama's presence on the ticket made it more dem but even in 2004 it had a PVI of D+6.4.

The reason I'm asking this is because when it comes to race, the state is almost a perfect microcosm of the country, so why isn't it a microcosm politically? It was, for the most part, a swing state for most of the 20th century. It is around 63-64 percent white with the rest being mostly black or hispanic with some asians here and there.

Cook County is a large percentage of the overall vote and it has a lot of white liberals that vote very Democratic in most years. The rest of the state mirrors the country a little bit better in terms of how polarization and voting patterns are.

Added to that, the suburbs of Chicago are increasingly urban and no longer uniformly white.

Chicago.

Plus the GOP doesn't have the suburban appeal as of 1988.

It doesn't have any Republican vote bastion that can be used to cancel out Chicago. Even in 2004 the DuPage-esque suburbs were only in the mid-50s for Bush.

Seriously. The 2010 gubernatorial map was insane: https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2010&fips=17&f=0&off=5&elect=0

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The Senate map was better in 2010.

It's the same as the gubernatorial map.

Well, a few shades were different. Those shades, I'm sure you agree, were rather important.

LOL, half of Quinn's votes came from Cook County.

There's been a lot of strange "Why is (insert state/city/town/county here) so Democratic/Republican?" threads recently, hasn't there?

That's what I love about Illinois. Those types of maps show the sheer power of Cook County. Democrats don't have to win any other county in the state, but if they run up their margins in Cook, it'll be a close race, and they can win. It's fascinating to look at.

This was a pretty dumb question...

Mid/South Illinois should be detached and attached to Indiana.  It's a shame for the rural people of Illinois to be drown out by Cook County

You mean just like people in Atlanta are drowned out by the good ol folks in the rest of the state?

Cook cast 39% of Illinois' ballots, Fulton 10% of Georgia's.  Big difference

There are places everywhere that get their votes drowned out by other areas, it's just how it is. No use complaining about it really.

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Well, it's not a fair comparison when you consider that the main conglomeration of "Atlanta" extends throughout Fulton, Dekalb and Clayton counties (which combined is roughly the same geographic size as Cook County), even though Atlanta's city limits fall in Fulton (and a sliver) of Dekalb. In 2010 in those 3 counties, the vote amounted to roughly 20% of all ballots cast. You come close to 35% if you liberally add in the sprawling areas of Cobb and Gwinnett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAlTOfl9F2w

The last GOP presidential win in IL was Bush in 1988. Dukakis only had a margin of 250 K in Cook and that was not enough to carry him statewide as he lost by 100 K, even though there were still a lot of southern IL counties voting D.

Clinton had a 640 K margin in Cook in 1992 and that was most of his margin on 720 K that year. 1996 was similar with a 690 K margin in Cook and 750 K statewide. During this decade the inner townships of Cook really started to tilt D creating margins that were previously associated with statewide landslides.

In the 2000 election the tilt of downstate to R began to show. Gore carried Cook by 750 K but only won the state by 570 K. The difference downstate grows in 2004 as Kerry takes Cook by 840 K but only has a 550 K win statewide.

Obama clearly gets a favorite son effect, but it's instructive to compare 1992 to 2008. The shift of southern IL vs suburban Chicago is quite marked. Since Chicago and suburbs controls an ever larger fraction of the state's vote, the Cook county margins will continue to dominate the state.

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what is downstate IL like? I'm guessing its kind of like rural Missouri?

Northern Illinois is more like Minnesota/Wisconsin/eastern Iowa, Southern Illinois is more like rural Missouri or Western Kentucky.

Western KY is a pretty good match to southern IL. The land and speech is similar. A lot of the area is old coal country. From the US Energy Information Agency: In 2010, Illinois ranked third in recoverable coal reserves at producing mines in the Nation; the state ranked eighth in production.

The GOP has had a severe erosion in the collar counties as well. The collar counties and Orange County, CA have had kind of the same trajectory, from massively Pub (probably generating along with OC the largest margins in raw votes for the Pubs of any area in the United States), to modestly Pub. The collar counties are what used to float the GOP's boat in Illinois.

Illinois is not a solidly blue state.  They have elected quite a few Republicans to statewide offices (e.g. Mark Kirk) in recent years.  But it still leans Democrat for the most part because Bill Clinton got all the suburban moderates to vote Democrat in the realignment of 1992 and they never came back (out of fear for the "right-wing Nazi extremist" Republicans).  Wisconsin is a swing state, too.

Clinton got the moderate suburbanites in the Chicago area to vote Democrat and they've been doing it ever since.

Although IL is a perfect microcosm of the nation racially, it doesn't have the deep south and plains/inner mountain west whites who skew the white vote so Republican nationally. Thus IL is more Democrat than the nation as a whole.

The GOP was able to hang onto IL for decades because of the white, white-collar, moderate voters in the suburbs.  Bush 41 for example, killed Dukakis in the burbs and that's why he won states such as IL, PA, NJ, DE, CT, MI, etc.

As the GOP lost the burbs, they lost states like IL.

One thing that's notable about the Chicagoland area is the lack of Fundie exurbs, which most other large Midwestern cities seem to have.

Wheaton?

That is easy to explain - considerably more urban than neighboring states and a larger minority population.  Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota are totally different as they are somewhat similiar to northern Illinois outside Chicago but you don't have nearly as strong and rural/urban split and likewise amongst the white vote, the Dems tend to do much better.  When compared to Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan; an easy way to look at it is remove Cook County from Illinois, leave Indiana as is, remove Cuyahoga County from Ohio, and remove Wayne County from Michigan and I suspect you would find the results are pretty close.  Likewise the only reason I think Obama does better amongst white votes in Illinois then those other three states is due his strength amongst whites in Cook County.  I suspect Romney probably got close to maybe even over 60% of whites outside Cook County whereas I suspect Obama won the white vote in Cook County by 10-15 points.  Also Illinois has the highest African-American population of any Midwestern state and its Hispanic population is substantially larger than any neighboring state.

Cook County is very blue but the rest of the state is red. Too bad so many people live in Cook County.

Chicago is one of the world's greatest transportation hubs by land and water -- just look at the rail pattern going into Chicago, and consider it having the natural waterway link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Highways and air transportation in Chicagoland reflects the reality of a well-situated giant city. Figure that huge amounts of bulk cargo -- grain, coal, iron ore, limestone  -- go through greater Chicago. Giant industry grows where the bulk cargo is easily concentrated and easily transshipped.

Cook with the g.o.t.v effort on part of Daley clan that downstate can't match.