AHC: Republican Illinois

I think with the most recent senator and governor elections the state is starting to turn red. Combine that with Wisconsin going red too and Republicans could ride in on a wave in a few years. However, I think Hillary will pick up the state in 2016.
 
I think with the most recent senator and governor elections the state is starting to turn red. Combine that with Wisconsin going red too and Republicans could ride in on a wave in a few years. However, I think Hillary will pick up the state in 2016.

Dick Durbin, a Democrat was re elected to the senate in 2014, and Rauner won after 12 years of Blagojevich and Quinn, and despite the governorship going to the GOP, the state legislature is still in democratic control. While Kirk did win Obama's old senate seat in 2010, he is vulnerable for 2016. I don't think Illinois is going red (at least at the national level) anytime soon, unless something drastic happens.
 
Dick Durbin, a Democrat was re elected to the senate in 2014, and Rauner won after 12 years of Blagojevich and Quinn, and despite the governorship going to the GOP, the state legislature is still in democratic control. While Kirk did win Obama's old senate seat in 2010, he is vulnerable for 2016. I don't think Illinois is going red (at least at the national level) anytime soon, unless something drastic happens.
The whole area around Illinois is going red...Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc. While I think it will certainly be a long time before they (Illinois) goes red, I think the reds are coming.
 
Illinois is really not all that solidly Democratic. Yes, Obama won big there both times, being a favorite son of sorts. However, the last Senatorial race went Republican, and the last governor's race was very close (46.8% to 45.9%), with the Republican candidate (Brady) winning 98 of 102 of the state's counties, but still losing because of the huge Democratic margin in Cook County.

No doubt the GOP can still win senatorial or gubernatorial elections in Illinois in a year when the Democratic candidate or incumbent is weak, like Quinn or Giannoulias. (It also helps if the GOP runs a candidate who does not share the social conservatism of the national GOP.) However, in presidential elections, yes, the state is solidly Democratic. This cannot be attributed solely to Obama's home-state advantage. Al Gore carried Illinois by more than 12 points in 2000, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000 and John Kerry won it by more than 10 points in 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004

It is true that in many elections, the majority (sometimes even a great majority) of counties vote Republican. So what? Counties do not vote; people do. And while Republicans have gained in much of downstate and especially southern Illinois, most of the counties there are rather sparsely populated. There is no way the GOP gains in that region can offset their losses in once-Republican Chicago suburbs and exurbs. As late as 1988, DuPage County went for Bush over Dukakis 69-30. Obama actually carried it not only in 2008 but even in 2012 (when his home-state advantage had faded somewhat). For a Democrat to even come within about ten points of a Republican president in DuPage, as Kerry did in 2004, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004 would have been unthinkable in the 1970's or 1980's. Of course this has something to do with the fact that once-nearly-all-white DuPage is now only about 70 percent non-Hispanic white. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPage_County,_Illinois

Incidentally, while Chicago has been a Democratic city for decades, it used to be common for a GOP presidential candidate to win several wards on the Northwest and Southwest Sides. GHW Bush won eight wards in 1988. http://www.lib.niu.edu/1989/ii890217.html Nowadays Republican presidential candidates cannot carry even the once-solidly Republican 41st Ward of the Far Northwest Side--and this was true in, for example, 2004 as well as 2008 and 2012. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...333_1_election-tables-local-elections-results
 
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