Illinois Primary Results

[ajb]

wpindicates that the exit polls are showing a Romney victory, but no specifics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/illinois-election-officials-ballot-problem-will-likely-delay-gop-primary-results/2012/03/20/gIQAKp2pPS_blog.html#pagebreak

No, it doesn't...

Yes it does:

While it will make for a late night for election workers and perhaps some journalists, there probably won’t be a lot of suspense about the outcome of the race, thanks to exit polling and Mitt Romney’s significant lead over his Republican rivals in recent polls in the state.

They are not saying, "exit polls tight and we could be up all night."

It's a badly written sentence, since that "thanks to exit polling" clause could either mean "thanks to the exit polling, which we've seen, and which is favorable to Romney," OR "thanks to the exit polling, which is likely to give us conclusive results before the delayed vote counting is complete."

I suspect the latter, since it's too early in the day for exit polling to be really meaningful, especially given that we all now know that Romney's been doing better in the early exit polling than in the final exit poll numbers at the end of the night.

All that said, I think we'd all be shocked at this point if Romney didn't win IL.

[ajb]

Which candidate has the best shot at beating Obama?

Romney voters:

Romney 93%
Santorum 1%

Santorum voters:

Santorum 58%
Romney 28% (I think)

They put this up on MSNBC.

Looking at the Alabama exit polls, Santorum got 96% of the 23% of voters who thought he had the best chance of beating Obama. So about 22% of the total number of voters were Santorum voters who thought that he had the best chance of beating Obama, which, divided by his 35% vote share, suggests that about 63% of Santorum voters in Alabama thought he had the best chance of beating Obama.

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/epolls/al

59% of AL voters thought the economy was the most important issue, and 35% thought that being able to beat Obama was the most important candidate quality.
All these numbers are useful context for what they're releasing from IL.

[ajb]

I'm thinking the exit polls will hold, and this will settle down to somewhere around an 8% Romney win.

[ajb]

Just for the hell of it, some comparisons to the 2008 Democratic Primary. No surprise that these guys are underperforming that contest statewide, since it's a blue state. But look at Lake County, one of Romney's strongholds.

2008 Democratic Primary:
Obama 57 999
Clinton 33 195

2012 Republican Primary (100% in from Lake County):
Romney  33 247
Santorum  16 563


Clinton was trounced in Lake County in 2008, but she got almost exactly as many votes as Romney got tonight in sweeping the county.

Just a reminder of how weak turnout has been in these primaries, and what a failed opportunity they've been for recruiting new voters for the Republican party.