This is silly. We know the people of Indiana LOVE Trump and HATE Hillary.
It's a rural-urban divide. Rural Hoosiers love Trump and despise just about any Democrat. Urban Hoosiers see through Donald Trump and tolerate Hillary Clinton.
Indiana is much like Illinois without Cook and Lake Counties in its distribution of liberals and conservatives. What passes as fairly-large cities (Rockford, Peoria, Springfield, and the Illinois half of the Quad Cities) add up to roughly Indianapolis; both states have their liberal college towns like Bloomington (either state), Champaign, or West Lafayette; both states have urban wrecks of industrial suburbs essentially as overflows from neighboring states (East St. Louis, Gary-Hammond). Otherwise, Indiana and "Southern Illinois" are basically much the same.
Bloomington, Illinois, is not that liberal of a city. ISU isn't that big or liberal, and the city is dominated more by the headquarters of State Farm than anything else.
And lumping all the 100 Illinois counties not named Cook or Lake together as "Southern Illinois" is a little bit of a stretch.
But I'd agree with the bulk of your argument.
