If Chicago was removed, would Illinois be a red or purple state?

[Maintainschaos]

Originally Posted by CCrest182

You are going off the notion that any mid sized city will vote blue, which is just not the case. Overall these areas lean red. Just because they are population centers does not mean they are democrat strongholds. Indiana also has towns like Bloomington, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend.... even considering them, the state is still staunchly red.

The small/mid size cities in IL are not blue enough or large enough to swing the state blue... nor are they particularly purple either (maybe with the exception of Champaign and Springfield). Even if they were purple, the rural population would swing the state to the right.

So when you take the staunchly red rural population.... plus the leaning red MSAs of Blo/No, Rockford, Quad Cities, Decatur etc... and combine them. You still will have a red state.

As for the rural population shrinking, you'd have to also consider if this would be different if the states' politics were completely inverse what they are currently with Chicago controlling everything. Rural population leaves the state for other low tax, business friendly and red states. IL would probably be all of those things of Chicago were gone; the rural population would probably not be fleeing.... not as much as they are now at least.

Except the data (unlike feelings) show that this idea just isn't true.

Over the last several decades, in aggregate, Illinois less Chicagoland is a swing state. A swing state (also referred to as a purple state here in this argument) is simply a state that sometimes votes one way and sometimes votes another way and can reasonably be won by either party (here considering only D and R). You cannot define a swing state by only one election. Moreover, as the rural population in IL continues to decline, the swing-state nature of IL (sans Chicagoland) is undoubtedly driven by the changing trends in the small and medium sized cities in northern Illinois, central Illinois, and the Metro East, with less and less influence of the rural population (that rural population can, actually, vote both blue and red in Illinois! See Clinton's elections and Obama's elections as two great illustrations).

For example, let's just use the last 8 presidential elections (30 yrs; 1992-2020) as a proxy for voting trends. Here's how the counties that house the primary components of the metro areas (minus Chicagoland) across Illinois voted (listed as 92, 96, 00, 04, 08, 12, 16, and 20) (D is Democrat; R is Republican):

Rockford/Winnebago: D/D/R/R/D/D/R/D (5D/3R)
Springfield/Sangamon: D/R/R/R/D/R/R/R (2D/6R)
Peoria/Peoria: D/D/D/D/D/D/R/D (7D/1R)
Champaign/Champaign: D/D/D/D/D/D/D/D (8D)
Bloomington/McLean: R/R/R/R/D/R/D/D (3D/5R)
Decatur/Macon: D/D/D/R/D/R/R/R (4D/4R)
Metro East/Madison: D/D/D/D/D/R/R/R (5D/3R)
Metro East/St. Clair: D/D/D/D/D/D/R/D (7D/1R)

So, in general, those metro areas that comprise a good portion of Illinois' urban areas outside of Chicagoland voted for a Democratic presidential candidate 5.1 times (on average) out of the 8 previous presidential elections and a Republican presidential candidate 2.9 times (on average) out of the 8 previous presidential elections, clearly illustrating the swing nature of the urban areas with a generally lean towards a D candidate over an R candidate.

How about the state of IL overall when it comes to the presidential vote? It's definitely purple/swing state in nature. Let's generously define Chicagoland (in Illinois) as comprising the following counties: Cook, Dekalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will. Sure, some of these are exurban counties, but they've become increasingly tied with Chicagoland over the years. Now, if we subtract these county contributions to the presidential elections (both the state D and R total votes), here's how things shake out:

1992: 853,287 (D); 668,626 (R)
1996: 790,962 (D); 682,153 (R)
2000: 818,386 (D); 888,382 (R) (fairly close race)
2004: 855,839 (D); 1,039,284 (R)
2008: 983,345 (D); 919,534 (R) (fairly close race)
2012: 830,271 (D); 971,638 (R)
2016: 709,256 (D); 1,071,974 (R)
2020: 801,016 (D); 1,169,346 (R)

All of the data were calculated from the state election wikipedia pages (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_U...on_in_Illinois) if you want to look at them yourself.

So, using the Presidential election as a proxy over the past 30 yrs, if we remove Chicagoland (generously defined) from the equation we see that the D candidate would still have carried the state 3 times (with 1 close race) and the R candidate would still have carried the state 5 times (with 1 close race). Take this information with the fact that the major urban areas in IL trend towards the D candidate over the R candidate (at a nearly 5:3 ratio), Illinois outside of Chicagoland is clearly a purple/swing state (at least from the lens of a presidential election).

I honestly can't see how the data would argue any other way than IL being a swing state over the past 3 decades.

[Funin74]

Red

[wjj]

Originally Posted by Maintainschaos

Except the data (unlike feelings) show that this idea just isn't true.

Over the last several decades, in aggregate, Illinois less Chicagoland is a swing state. A swing state (also referred to as a purple state here in this argument) is simply a state that sometimes votes one way and sometimes votes another way and can reasonably be won by either party (here considering only D and R). You cannot define a swing state by only one election. Moreover, as the rural population in IL continues to decline, the swing-state nature of IL (sans Chicagoland) is undoubtedly driven by the changing trends in the small and medium sized cities in northern Illinois, central Illinois, and the Metro East, with less and less influence of the rural population (that rural population can, actually, vote both blue and red in Illinois! See Clinton's elections and Obama's elections as two great illustrations).

For example, let's just use the last 8 presidential elections (30 yrs; 1992-2020) as a proxy for voting trends. Here's how the counties that house the primary components of the metro areas (minus Chicagoland) across Illinois voted (listed as 92, 96, 00, 04, 08, 12, 16, and 20) (D is Democrat; R is Republican):

Rockford/Winnebago: D/D/R/R/D/D/R/D (5D/3R)
Springfield/Sangamon: D/R/R/R/D/R/R/R (2D/6R)
Peoria/Peoria: D/D/D/D/D/D/R/D (7D/1R)
Champaign/Champaign: D/D/D/D/D/D/D/D (8D)
Bloomington/McLean: R/R/R/R/D/R/D/D (3D/5R)
Decatur/Macon: D/D/D/R/D/R/R/R (4D/4R)
Metro East/Madison: D/D/D/D/D/R/R/R (5D/3R)
Metro East/St. Clair: D/D/D/D/D/D/R/D (7D/1R)

So, in general, those metro areas that comprise a good portion of Illinois' urban areas outside of Chicagoland voted for a Democratic presidential candidate 5.1 times (on average) out of the 8 previous presidential elections and a Republican presidential candidate 2.9 times (on average) out of the 8 previous presidential elections, clearly illustrating the swing nature of the urban areas with a generally lean towards a D candidate over an R candidate.

How about the state of IL overall when it comes to the presidential vote? It's definitely purple/swing state in nature. Let's generously define Chicagoland (in Illinois) as comprising the following counties: Cook, Dekalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will. Sure, some of these are exurban counties, but they've become increasingly tied with Chicagoland over the years. Now, if we subtract these county contributions to the presidential elections (both the state D and R total votes), here's how things shake out:

1992: 853,287 (D); 668,626 (R)
1996: 790,962 (D); 682,153 (R)
2000: 818,386 (D); 888,382 (R) (fairly close race)
2004: 855,839 (D); 1,039,284 (R)
2008: 983,345 (D); 919,534 (R) (fairly close race)
2012: 830,271 (D); 971,638 (R)
2016: 709,256 (D); 1,071,974 (R)
2020: 801,016 (D); 1,169,346 (R)

All of the data were calculated from the state election wikipedia pages (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_U...on_in_Illinois) if you want to look at them yourself.

So, using the Presidential election as a proxy over the past 30 yrs, if we remove Chicagoland (generously defined) from the equation we see that the D candidate would still have carried the state 3 times (with 1 close race) and the R candidate would still have carried the state 5 times (with 1 close race). Take this information with the fact that the major urban areas in IL trend towards the D candidate over the R candidate (at a nearly 5:3 ratio), Illinois outside of Chicagoland is clearly a purple/swing state (at least from the lens of a presidential election).

I honestly can't see how the data would argue any other way than IL being a swing state over the past 3 decades.

This pretty much confirms my analysis upthread that this century, the Republican candidate for president would have won IL five out of six elections ex-Cook County. I think that is a more fair assessment of the current situation than going back 30 years. We could go back to 1980 and show that the Republican presidential candidate would have won ex-Cook County eight out of eleven elections. Or heck, go back to 1952 and show the Republican won 15 out of 18 times ex-Cook County. But what's the point? The US and IL are markedly different now than they were 30-40-50-60-70 years ago. My Congressional district was reliably Republican the entire time I have lived here (since 1980) with the Republican winning 19 out of 20 elections - until 2016. Today, after redistricting, the Democrat has won the last four elections. My claiming that my district is still red because the Republican won 19 out of 24 elections since 1980 (or 12 out of 17 since 1990) is pretty meaningless since today, it is a very blue district. IL without Cook County (which is the topic of this thread) pretty clearly leans red this century and was solidly red prior to that with occasional hiccups.

I think the bigger issue is that with all the out-migration, IL has lost a lot of influence in DC that it once had. At one time, IL had 27 Congressional representatives. Today, it has only 17.

[SonySegaTendo617]

Originally Posted by Maintainschaos

Downstate is generally moderate or "purple" as we're calling it. I'm not sure the Trump insanity is a good guide, personally, but even then you see it as a nearly 50/50 split, with rural areas sparsely populated but strongly conservative, some urban areas liberal and Democratic (Champaign, parts of the Metro East), and others somewhat in the middle (Bloomington, Springfield, Peoria).

Would the county with Carbondale be considered purple, a la 'Chambana'? I guess DeKalb would be considered purple, as well

[Durian Beach]

Purple because of the I-57 Amtrak crime corridor. Chicago has been exporting the hood downstate into our once safe communities. They even gerrymandered a new congressional district along I 72 then down to East St. Louis for another Democrat in congress. However if a new state were formed south of I 80 less generous with the welfare handouts and tough of crime then maybe these people who invited themselves down here would move back to Chicago.