Downstate Illinois

[PragmaticPopulist]

Nearly everything outside the Chicago area in Illinois took a sharp right in 2016. Does anyone think this is just a temporary realignment similar to the swings in upstate New York, or is this a new normal?

[JGibson]

Western/West-Central/Northwestern IL (Peoria, Moline, Galesburg, Sterling, Fulton): May just be temporary. It could swing back to the Dems, due to the fact that a lot of this area was Obama 2x/Trump territory. Peoria County is still swingy (as evidenced in the fact that it was a Hillary/Kirk county). Rock Island County still a rock-solid county for the Dems.

McLean County (Bloomington/Normal): GOP-leaning county, but trending Dem.

Sangamon County (Springfield): GOP-leaning county, but will vote for the Dem in the right circumstance.

Macon County (Decatur): Likely GOP county. It's trending GOP, too.

Champaign County (Champaign/Urbana): Strongly Democratic county.

Southern Illinois (Alton, Carbondale, Marion, Mt. Vernon, Belleville, Cairo): Mostly a permanent trend to the GOP.
St. Clair County, Alexander County (although it went Trump), and Jackson County are the only consistently Dem areas. Most of this area of Illinois was once Democratic-friendly, but no more (except at the countywide level and in some state legislative seats, and even that's starting to change).

My county (Madison) is going towards the GOP direction, as evidenced by Kurt Prenzler's win for County Board Chair and the County Board flipping Red (atlas Blue), Dick Durbin's and Lisa Madigan's losses in their 2014 victories, and Trump's larger victory margin than Romney's narrow one in 2012. However, there is some decent residual Democratic strength, as they hold almost all of the countywide offices and the fact that Duckworth won it for her Senate race and Tom Gibbons' re-election as the county's State's Attorney.

[TML]

Note that Trump flipped a string of counties in northwestern Illinois. This region is located right next to two states he flipped outright - Iowa and Wisconsin. More specifically, it is located right next to northeastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin, both of which Trump flipped big time.

If a future Democratic candidate can flip NE Iowa and SW Wisconsin, then he or she will likely flip NW Illinois as well.

[Tekken_Guy]

Downstate IL is classic rural midwest territory a la Missouri or Iowa.

[RINO Tom]

Downstate IL is classic rural midwest territory a la Missouri or Iowa.

Not sure what "classic rural" means, but Downstate Illinois has a lot more population than this forum likes to admit.  It's not a mostly rural region at all.

Chicagoland: 8,488,857
  - Chicago: 2,720,546
  - Cook Suburbs: 2,482,953
  - Collar Counties: 3,285,358
  - (The remaining population of the Chicago area is in either Wisconsin or Indiana)
Downstate Illinois: 4,312,682 (the cutoffs below are debatable, I think I used a state government map I found)
  - Northern Illinois: 1,182,137
  - Central Illinois: 1,921,129
  - Southern Illinois: 1,209,416

Here is how Downstate breaks down:

NORTHERN ILLINOIS: 1,182,137
  - Rockford: 339,376
  - Quad Cities (Illinois side): 209,794
  - Kankakee: 110,008
  - "Rural" Northern IL: 522,959 (44.24% of Northern IL)

CENTRAL ILLINOIS: 1,921,129
  - Galesburg: 68,316
  - Peoria: 376,246
  - Bloomington: 172,418
  - Champaign: 238,554
  - Springfield: 210,015
  - Danville: 78,111
  - Decatur: 106,550
  - "Rural" Central IL: 670,919 (34.92% of Central IL)

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS: 1,209,416
  - Metro East (St. Louis Suburbs): 600,315
  - Carbondale: 58,870
  - "Rural" Southern IL: 550,231 (45.50% of Southern IL)

Overall, the rural components of Downstate IL (522,959+670,919+550,231 = 1,744,109) account for 40% of the population.  Of course, I would consider many of those places (e.g., Galena) to definitely not be rural, but whatever.  Take away the Des Moines area, and I bet Iowa is more rural than Downstate Illinois (not to mention Downstate IL is more populous than the entire state of Iowa).  Take away KC and STL from Missouri, and I bet Missouri is more rural than Downstate IL.  Any time you literally take a state's biggest metro from it, it's going to be more rural, but why should that strange rule apply to only Illinois?  The non-major-metro parts of Illinois aren't as rural as the non-maor metro parts of surrounding states, IMO, especially when you consider the cultural influence being in a state with Chicago inevitably has on everyone in the state.

[MT Treasurer]

^Tbf, Kirk underperforming in the downstate areas had to be expected, given the fact that he disavowed Trump and basically ran away from his own party (which was truly pathetic to watch). Her showing in the collars was bit more surprising, but I guess Kirk's debate gaffe and his awful campaign in general hurt him there as well. Plus, it was a presidential year, those areas are changing demographically, and ticket-splitting in blue states isn't really common anymore.

[Hydera]

^Tbf, Kirk underperforming in the downstate areas had to be expected, given the fact that he disavowed Trump and basically ran away from his own party (which was truly pathetic to watch). Her showing in the collars was bit more surprising, but I guess Kirk's debate gaffe and his awful campaign in general hurt him there as well. Plus, it was a presidential year, those areas are changing demographically, and ticket-splitting in blue states isn't really common anymore.

Still crazy though. She is a female Asian Chicagoland Democrat who only lost "Downstate" (in this definition, not Cook-DuPage-Will-Kane-Lake-DeKalb. I included McHenry and Kendall just because they were both won by Trump and Kirk.) by 207677 while Hillary lost it by 378994. That's a pretty big difference, even considering the gaffe and him running away from Trump. Look at Ayotte and Heck who also disavowed Trump. They didn't run behind him in Trump-friendly areas nearly this much. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since this is probably more of an ancestral Democratic thing than anything really unique to Duckworth.

Yeah its just split ticket working class democrats voting Trump/Duckworth meanwhile suburban Chicago had Hillary/Kirk voters.

[RINO Tom]

^Tbf, Kirk underperforming in the downstate areas had to be expected, given the fact that he disavowed Trump and basically ran away from his own party (which was truly pathetic to watch). Her showing in the collars was bit more surprising, but I guess Kirk's debate gaffe and his awful campaign in general hurt him there as well. Plus, it was a presidential year, those areas are changing demographically, and ticket-splitting in blue states isn't really common anymore.

Still crazy though. She is a female Asian Chicagoland Democrat who only lost "Downstate" (in this definition, not Cook-DuPage-Will-Kane-Lake-DeKalb. I included McHenry and Kendall just because they were both won by Trump and Kirk.) by 207677 while Hillary lost it by 378994. That's a pretty big difference, even considering the gaffe and him running away from Trump. Look at Ayotte and Heck who also disavowed Trump. They didn't run behind him in Trump-friendly areas nearly this much. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since this is probably more of an ancestral Democratic thing than anything really unique to Duckworth.

Not trying to be rude, but this seems inexplicably bizarre to me.  You're cutting two counties that are definitely part of Chicagoland out of your definition because they didn't vote the way you think they should?  Was DuPage not a part of the Chicago area until it voted for its first Democrat EVER in 2008?  LOL.  To make that cutoff even more arbitrary and foolish, 1,052,726 of Trump's 2,118,179 votes came from the Chicago area!  That's HALF.  There are MILLIONS of Republican voters in the Chicagoland area, the fact that there happen to be more Democratic ones does not cause these Republicans to cease to exist.  Whether they're losing the collar counties or winning them, those counties remain absolutely crutial to a Republican's vote total in Illinois, and to cut off two counties that don't fit the narrative is crazy.

Sorry, I know that wasn't the point of your post, it's just all-too-often assumed here that there aren't literally millions of Republican and Democratic voters who just happen to live in counties and metro areas and states that contain a tad bit more of their opposition.

[Kingpoleon]

Eventually, it will become the case that the map for IL-GOV 2014 will be normal, with exceptions for Bustos, Durbin, and Lipinski, and maybe one or two others.

[PragmaticPopulist]

Eventually, it will become the case that the map for IL-GOV 2014 will be normal, with exceptions for Bustos, Durbin, and Lipinski, and maybe one or two others.

I kinda doubt the 2014 governor map is gonna be the new normal. The collar counties are trending D, and so is Champaign County.

[Kingpoleon]

Eventually, it will become the case that the map for IL-GOV 2014 will be normal, with exceptions for Bustos, Durbin, and Lipinski, and maybe one or two others.

I kinda doubt the 2014 governor map is gonna be the new normal. The collar counties are trending D, and so is Champaign County.

Personally, I'd like to see the alignment become the GOV-1998 map, with a populist Democratic Party facing a moderate-classical liberal GOP.