I've decided to spotlight some interesting elections from past years. I'll start with:
1988 Results for Chicago:
George H. W. Bush (R): 1,614,245 (49.72%)
Michael Dukakis (D): 1,607,587 (49.51%)
Others: 24,852 (0.77%)
What... Bush carried Chicago ?!? How comes ? 
Chicago suburbs used to be very Republican, and even Cook county wasn't as overwhelmingly Democratic as it is today. The only counties in Chicago that Dukakis carried were Cook (55.77%), Kenosha (57.72%), and the Lake in Indiana (56.55%), while suburban counties such as DuPage hovered around 70% for Bush.
But the weird thing is that Illinois was quite close at the time (it went to Bush by only 2 points), so if Dukakis is so poor in Chicago, it means he'd poll quite well in the new Illinois. He probably would have lost by a margin inferior to Bush's national margin, which means Alternate Illinois was more democratic in 1988 than in 2008... Very weird.
I know I'm a few years off, but I'd like to address this revelation from the new maps. Indeed, it makes sense that new Illinois would have trended Republican since 88. Central Illinois, farm country, has been hardcore Republican the whole time, and the northwestern part of the state, union country, mostly Democrat. Southern Illinois, or Little Egypt, however, is hilly and acts more like Kentucky than it does any other part of Illinois. We know that Kentucky has seen a Republican trend since 88, which is easy to explain with the shifts of the party brands and candidates, and so we can explain why that has happened in Illinois as well.
Anyway, awesome job to everyone who has contributed here. What a fascinating scenario!
