Southern Illinois University Carbondale
OpenSIUC
e Simon Review (Occasional Papers of the Paul
Simon Public Policy Institute)
Paul Simon Public Policy Institute
2-2013
President Obama's Victories in Illinois: 2012
Compared to 2008
John S. Jackson
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, jsjacson@siu.edu
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is is paper #34.
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Recommended Citation
Jackson, John S., "President Obama's Victories in Illinois: 2012 Compared to 2008" (2013). e Simon Review (Occasional Papers of the
Paul Simon Public Policy Institute). Paper 34.
hp://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/ppi_papers/34
1
THE SIMON REVIEW
President Obama’s Victories in Illinois:
2012 Compared to 2008
By: John S. Jackson
Paper #34
February 2013
A Publication of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute
Author’s Note: The author would like to thank Cary Bryant, Ashley Rippentrop, Shanara
Bush, and David Lynch for their invaluable assistance in the research for this paper.
2
President Obama’s Victories in Illinois: 2012 Compared to 2008
By: John S. Jackson Paul Simon Public Policy Institute
Abstract: This paper describes and analyzes President Obama’s 2012 election victory in
Illinois and compares it to his earlier victory in 2008 in his home state. It also extends the
analysis back through the 2004 and 2000 presidential elections and shows how those results
were similar and where they differed. It primarily relies on the county and county election
returns supplemented by U. S. Census data as the unit of analysis. The paper sets Illinois into
a national electoral context describing what is happening in an era of deep partisan
polarization coupled with the prospects for a partisan realignment.
Introduction
Barack Obama is the first President elected directly from Illinois since both Abraham Lincoln
and Ulysses S. Grant won two elections each during the Civil War and its immediate aftermath
in the 1860s and 1870s. Other candidates from Illinois have run and been a factor in the
presidential sweepstakes such as Adlai E. Stevenson, II who ran twice and was twice defeated
by the same man, Dwight Eisenhower, in 1952 and 1956. We have also produced several viable
candidates who sought their party’s nomination unsuccessfully including John Anderson, Paul
Simon, and Phillip Crane. Adlai E. Stevenson was Cleveland’s Vice President in 1892 and John A.
Logan was James G. Blaine’s Vice Presidential running mate in 1884. However, Barack Obama is
the first candidate from Illinois to actually win the nomination, twice, and win the general
election, twice, since the Civil War era. As a producer of presidents Illinois is now somewhat
behind the three leaders, Virginia, New York, and Ohio but equal with Texas in the second tier
of states which have produced multiple presidents and who have had their careers shaped by
their state’s politics before climbing to national fame (Stanley and Niemi, 2010, 233-237).
Paul Simon’s influential book, Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness, showed just how important
Lincoln’s experience in Illinois politics, especially his time in the Illinois General Assembly was in
shaping his views and values and his approach to governing in Washington (Simon, 1971). A
similar work on Obama would also conclude that his service in the Illinois General Assembly
was an important factor in shaping his views and political style and values. That period also
produced some indicators of how he might approach being president especially through the
seeking of bipartisan solutions to difficult problems and courting cooperation across the aisle.
His record in Illinois indicates that Obama is by nature a conciliator, a consensus seeker and
coalition builder and that was his major forte during his time in the Illinois legislature. It was
also his initial approach to the presidency although that changed as time went on and
experience with the Congress in a highly polarized and partisan era changed him by the
beginning of his second term. Likewise studying Obama’s three statewide victories in Illinois
3
politics provides some worthwhile clues as to where he had the most and least electoral appeal
in 2008 and 2012 and how he approached the very political task of building an electoral
majority in a large and diverse state like Illinois.
In 2006 I wrote a Simon Review paper documenting the rise of Barack Obama to a position of
power in Illinois politics via his winning the U. S. Senate seat in 2004 (Jackson, 2006). Later I
extended this analysis to Obama’s victory in Illinois in his first quest for the presidency (Jackson,
2009). Obama’s 2008 presidential nomination and subsequent election victory, one of nearly
landslide proportion in the Electoral College, was almost unprecedented for a candidate who
was as young and unknown on the national stage as he was at the time, and it was absolutely
unprecedented for a candidate with his racial identity to ascend to the White House while
defeating two of the most experienced and respected recent candidates, Hillary Clinton and
John McCain, one Democrat and one Republican, in the process.
The current paper is a continuation of that series documenting how Obama fared in his
presidential re-election race of 2012. At that point Obama was certainly no longer unknown
and his record in the management of the government, especially in regard to his management
of the economy, was the central point of contention in the 2012 general election. In addition,
the polarized state of American politics has been the major fact of political life in Washington
recently, especially after the gains of the Republican Party and its Tea Party faction in the 2010
mid-term elections (Levendusky, 2009; Fiorina, 2005; White, 2003).
When the Democrats lost control of the U. S. House and suffered reduced numbers in the
Senate after 2010, bipartisanship and conciliation largely became things of the past in the
Obama Administration, and it became much more difficult for the president to get any of his
major legislative priorities enacted in such a divided Congress. Partisan and ideological gridlock
and stalemate became much more the norm during the second half of Obama’s first term.
The national election was certainly a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of his office and of
the government, and the same was true in Illinois. This paper details how he did in Illinois in
2012 and how this election compared with his electoral record from 2008. Illinois has been a
typical state for national politics for a long time. One study based on U. S. Census data ranked
Illinois as “the most average state” in the union (Ohlemacher, 2007). Indeed, despite its
reputation as a leading blue or pro-Democratic state currently (Green, 2003; Green 2007),
Illinois is still one where either party can win statewide depending on the candidate and the
circumstances of the moment (Jackson, 2011).
In creating this longitudinal electoral record I hope to shed some light on the larger patterns of
both continuity and change in Illinois and national politics as illustrated by the Obama elections.
Obama’s record has been written in less than a decade since he first appeared on the state and
4
then the national scene and went on to achieve the kind of success only realized by a handful of
presidents who have been elected to two terms. In fact, of the 43 presidents we have had in
the United States prior to Obama, only seventeen, or less than half, have been elected to a
second term. So, Obama has already joined select company from a very small universe which
begins with George Washington at the founding of the Republic in 1789 and extends through
George W. Bush who prevailed in the first two elections of the 21
st
Century (Stanley and Niemi,
2010, 17-21).
Illinois certainly played a crucial role in shaping the political values and the career of the young
Barack Obama, not only providing him his first home and profession as a new college graduate
and later a new law school graduate, but also providing him the political base to move from
South Side Chicago community organizer and constitutional law professor at the University of
Chicago, to the Illinois State Senate, and then to the United States Senate, all before he had
reached his 45
th
birthday. For all the controversy which seemed to never die over his
birthplace, no one ever doubted that his political home was firmly planted in Illinois. That
grounding in Illinois was topped by an overwhelming popular election victory in 2008, both
nationally and in the state, and then confirmed by another popular vote victory, by a smaller
but still convincing margin in 2012.
On a common sense or conventional wisdom basis, one might think initially that there was
nothing at all unusual about a presidential candidate winning his home state. That is the most
common outcome in American presidential elections; and if a candidate is not carrying his
home state, preferably by a wide margin, then he is probably in some trouble nationally. While
carrying the home state is the norm, it is by no means a confirmed law of politics. There are
several recent examples of presidential candidates not carrying their home states. Al Gore was
elected U. S. Senator from Tennessee first in 1984 and then again by a larger margin in 1990
and he had been a four term Congressman before then. Yet in 2000 Gore failed to carry his
own state and thus lost the election to George W. Bush in a much disputed outcome involving a
537 official vote margin in Florida and the 5:4 vote of the U. S. Supreme Court. However, Gore
would not have even needed Florida if he had just carried Tennessee, which was not out of the
question since he and Bill Clinton together had carried both Tennessee and Arkansas in 1992
and 1996.
Or consider the case of Mitt Romney who lost the state he had served as Governor,
Massachusetts, which Obama won by a 63.20 percent margin in 2012. In addition, Romney lost
his native state, Michigan, the state where he was born and raised, and the state his father had
served as Governor, by a similar margin in 2012 when Obama carried Michigan by a 58.37
percent margin. Romney also had a second home in New Hampshire, which he repaired to
frequently to escape the rigors of the campaign trail during the 2012 election, and he also lost
5
New Hampshire by a narrow but still decisive 54.87 percent Obama margin. He also lost
California, another state where he had a home, by a wide margin. In summary, Mitt Romney
did not have a place where he could claim a home state advantage unless it was Utah where he
scored his biggest victory of the 2012 election with an overwhelming 74 percent of the popular
vote (David Wasserman, Redistricting web site, accessed Nov. 21, 2012, unofficial and partially
incomplete returns).
Going back in history, Adlai E. Stevenson, II ran twice against Dwight Eisenhower in both 1952
and 1956, and he lost Illinois both times. Illinois was Stevenson’s home state, the place he had
served as Governor, the place where he had built his political reputation and base, and he lost it
twice. Making it remarkably evident how much our politics have changed, it is even more
notable now to consider that Adlai Stevenson carried all of the states of the Deep South, while
losing Texas, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee, in both 1952 and 1956, and only losing the Deep
South’s Louisiana in 1956. The South was the Democratic base in that era. But Stevenson lost
Illinois both times. Times have certainly changed with the Deep South and the peripheral South
now forming the virtually unassailable bedrock of the Republican presidential core.
In 2012, Obama’s victory in Illinois was sizable although it was not greater than in his native
state of Hawaii or the District of Columbia and several other Northeastern and Midwestern
states which exceeded the percentage Obama gained in Illinois. These states are the latest
markers in the party realignment which has seen the Northeast and parts of the industrial
Midwest transformed from solidly favoring the Republicans in presidential elections to
providing the most promising base for Democrats in our current presidential politics.
For most of the 20
th
century Illinois was one of the most typical states from an overall
demographic and political perspective. Illinois almost always reflects the national vote and in
the 20
th
Century; it only went against the national winner in 1916 when the state voted for
Charles Evans Hughes over the Democratic incumbent, Woodrow Wilson, and in 1976 Illinois
again swam against the national tide and voted for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. Those were
the only two instances in the entire 20
th
Century when Illinois voted against the presidential
winner. More recently, in the 1980s Illinois voted for Reagan twice and for George H. W. Bush
in 1988. That was four consecutive wins for the Republicans. So, for that century, Illinois was a
competitive state where either party could win which both reflected and helped lead the
national trends in presidential politics.
In many important ways, Illinois politics are indicative of larger trends in national politics. In a
realigning era, Illinois has trended more and more firmly toward the Democratic Party and the
Republicans have lost significant ground in this state over the past two decades of presidential
and statewide elections. Since 1992 when Illinois went for Clinton, Illinois has been one of the
leading and most dependable components of any Democratic presidential candidate’s core
6
strength. Clinton won twice. Then Gore won Illinois in 2000; John Kerry won in 2004, and
Obama won in 2008 and 2012. While this is a consistently pro-Democratic victory outcome, it is
also worth noting that except for 2004, Illinois voted for the winner of the national popular vote
in every election since 1976 and in that respect can be considered “typical”. The contours of
Obama’s victory map illustrate that transition from Republican victories under Reagan and
George H. W. Bush to Democratic victories under Clinton and Obama.
Sports fans know that there is a definite home court advantage in basketball, baseball, hockey
and other sports, and ordinarily that analogy carries over to politics as well but not always. So
it is worthwhile to analyze how and where Obama fashioned his adopted home state victory in
both 2008 and in 2012 and what important trends in American politics are indicated by those
victories. That is the objective of this paper.
The Data Analysis
Let us begin by examining the size and scope of President Obama’s victory both nationally and
in Illinois. On the national level, Obama won a majority of the popular vote with approximately
51.03 percent of the total compared to 47.19 percent for Romney. This resulted from Obama’s
approximately 65,899,583 total votes to Romney’s 60,931,966 - a margin of almost five million
(http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2012, accessed Jan. 11, 2013).
While the popular vote was somewhat close, the Electoral College vote was almost a blow out
for Obama. He beat Romney by a 332 to 206 vote margin, or a 62 percent Electoral College
victory. Obama carried 26 states, plus the District of Columbia, compared to 24 for Romney.
This provided only a narrow net state advantage to Obama; however, the president carried far
more of the larger states and he carried eight out of ten of the states originally considered to be
the most competitive, or “battleground” states which either candidate could have won and
where both candidates spent an extraordinary amount of time campaigning personally. For all
the enormous amount of time, energy and resources the Romney campaign poured into the
battleground states, he ultimately emerged with victories in only North Carolina and Indiana as
two take-away states from the 2008 Obama Electoral College margin of 365 to 173 over John
McCain.
This map illustrates the way the Electoral College normally works. That is, a fairly narrow
victory in the popular vote, especially if it exceeds a majority at 50 to 51 percent, usually
translates into a much larger Electoral College victory. The 2012 election provided another case
reinforcing that general rule. Supporters of the Electoral College contend that this Electoral
College magnification of the majority is good for the system. They argue that it is effective in
bestowing a sense of legitimacy and claiming rights on an electoral mandate if the Electoral
7
College vote victory is by a significantly wide margin. Map 1 provides the graphic display of
those national popular and electoral vote returns.
The national results then provide the context for analyzing the Illinois results. Obama carried
Illinois with 57.60 percent of the total popular vote. This was in comparison with the 61.92
percent he carried Illinois by in 2008 (Illinois State Board of Elections, 2013 and 2008). This
marked a decline in the Obama popular vote in Illinois of 4.32 percent between 2008 and 2012.
So, in that sense, Obama actually lost some ground in Illinois between 2008 and 2012, which
was also true nationally when his popular vote margin declined from 52.9 percent to 51.03
percent or a net decline of 1.87 percent nationally (Stanley and Niemi, 2010, 25; David
Liep,http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2012, accessed, January 11,
2013). Thus, Obama lost a somewhat larger percentage of the Illinois popular vote than he did
of the national popular vote in 2012. The economic situation which had worked in Obama’s
8
favor in 2008 had less positive impact for him in 2012 even though it was probably overall still a
net positive, narrowly, according to the polls.
In some respects the geographical totals were mirrored at the state level if you use the county
as the unit of analysis. The analogy is not entirely apt since the counties are not constitutionally
or legally the same thing as the states in the Electoral College. Ultimately it does not matter
much how many counties a candidate carries, but it does matter critically how many states, and
which states, the candidate for president carries. Nevertheless, counties are important units of
local government and they are key party organizational building blocks and political rallying
points as well. The county court houses usually are filled with officials who are the backbone of
their local party organizations (Jackson, 2011). In this sense, the counties are an effective
window onto the world of local politics. They represent grassroots leaders and average voters
down at a level where most people live and receive governmental services and where they pay
significant amounts of their local taxes.
In addition, most counties are embedded in and reflect their own particular political culture. In
most states, certainly in Illinois, there are counties which are well known as Democratic or
Republican strongholds where the candidates at the top of the ticket do not seem to matter
much as these counties vote routinely for their traditional party favorite no matter what the
national or statewide trends may be at the time. There are others which can be relied on as
marginal or swing counties where the results change from election to election and immediately
reflect the political tides of the moment and which are also potentially involved in longer term
transitions from one political party to another. If you are going to capture the picture of long
term secular changes in American politics, county level voting returns are a very good place to
document those processes in action. For all those reasons, the counties are important units of
analysis for any election, including the presidential elections.
9
10
Map 2 provides the results by county for the 2012 presidential election in Illinois. It is
immediately evident from this table that Obama carried only 23 counties compared to 79 for
Romney. Obama carried northeastern Illinois, northwestern Illinois, and a smattering of other
counties. Thus, in terms of sheer geography, the map of Illinois had far more red territory than
blue showing on it on Tuesday night, November 6
th
. Appendix A provides the complete 2012
voting returns for the two major parties for each Illinois county.
Table 1 displays the 2012 election return data divided into the traditional three major
geographical sections of the state, i.e. Chicago and Cook County, the five Collar Counties which
form the suburban ring around Chicago, and the remaining 96 counties which are routinely
referred to as “Downstate.”
Cook County accounts for 40 percent of the total population in the state. Obviously it is the
major prize in any statewide contest no matter which year and what candidates are involved.
In 2012 Cook County provided a large vote total margin of 1,488,537 for Obama and 495,542
for Romney (Illinois State Board of Elections, website, accessed, January 9, 2013). Obviously,
Cook County and Chicago were absolutely essential keys to the size of the statewide victory for
Obama. However, contrary to popular belief in Downstate Illinois, they were certainly not the
whole story. The popular vote total for Obama from Cook County was 49.30 percent of his
statewide popular vote margin. In other words, with 40 percent of the state’s population, Cook
County provided almost half of Obama’s total votes in Illinois.
The additional Obama margin of victory in the popular vote came especially and notably from
the five Collar Counties. Obama carried four of those five, losing only McHenry narrowly. In
those five counties combined Obama scored a 647,575 to 613,712 popular vote margin victory
over Romney or a 33,863 Obama vote margin. This margin was certainly one of the major
explanations for the Obama victory in his home state in 2012. No Republican candidate can
afford a net loss in the five Collar Counties, much less coming out of the collars with an almost
34,000 vote deficit. In order to be a viable statewide candidate, a Republican needs to win the
Collar Counties, and even win by a comfortable margin, in order to have a chance against the
Democrats.
11
Table 1
The five Collar Counties, Cook County, and Downstate Contributions
Obama
votes
Percent of
Obama's
Total
Romney
votes
Percent of
Romney's
Total
Cook County
1,488,537
49.30
495,542
23.21
Five Collar Counties
647,575
21.45
613,712
28.74
Downstate
883,400
29.26
1,025,962
48.05
Total
3,019,512
100.00
2,135,216
100.00
The "Collar Counties" are Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage, and Will.
Source; U.S. Census. 2010. http://quickfacts.census.gov/gfd/states/17/17001.html
Accessed: Dec. 20, 2012
So, Obama won Cook County by a very wide margin of almost one million votes. He then took
the Collar Counties with almost 34,000 vote margin. This left only Downstate where Romney
ran much better; however, he did not have enough total votes out of Downstate to come
anywhere close to winning statewide. As Table 1 indicates, Romney took an aggregate of
1,0265,962 total votes from Downstate compared to 883,400 for Obama. This is an advantage
of 142,562 votes for Romney provided by Downstate. Ordinarily this would not be a bad vote
margin from Downstate for a Republican candidate. However, Romney’s Downstate advantage
was more than counterbalanced by the 1,026,858 vote advantage Obama enjoyed over
Romney in Cook and the suburban counties. As Table 1 shows, Romney received 48.28 percent
of his statewide total from Downstate while Obama received only 29.26 percent of his total
vote from Downstate. Realistically there are just not enough votes in the 96 Downstate
Counties for any Republican to make up the deficits Romney sustained in Cook and the five
Collar Counties.
Table 2 expands the scope of the inquiry to the fifteen most populated counties in Illinois. As
the summary statistics on the table indicate, these fifteen topmost counties are where most of
the people live in Illinois. They account for, in total, 10,168,148 of the total of 12,830,632
people who were counted by the U. S. Census in 2010. Thus, 79.24 percent of all the Prairie
12
State’s people are found in only fifteen of its one hundred and two total counties. Of those top
fifteen, Obama carried ten counties and Romney carried only five. The behemoth is Cook
County which accounts for 5,194,675 of the total of almost thirteen million people in the state.
However, even if one leaves Cook County out of the equation, Obama still enjoyed a 4 to 1 ratio
over Romney in the fifteen most populated counties (Data taken from U. S. Census, 2010;
http:/quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/17/17007.html, accessed December 18, 2012).
Table 2
Top Fifteen Largest Counties in Illinois
2010
Population
2012 Presidential
vote
Obama
Vote
Romney
Vote
Cook
5,194,675
Obama
1,488,537
495,542
*
DuPage
916,924
Obama
199,460
195,046
*
Lake
703,462
Obama
153,757
129,764
*
Will
677,560
Obama
144,229
128,969
*
Kane
515,269
Obama
90,332
88,335
*
McHenry
308,760
Romney
59,797
71,598
Winnebago
295,266
Obama
61,732
55,138
St. Clair
270,056
Obama
67,285
50,125
Madison
269,282
Romney
58,922
60,608
Champaign
201,081
Obama
40,831
35,312
Sangamon
197,465
Romney
42,107
50,225
Peoria
186,494
Obama
40,209
36,774
McLean
169,572
Romney
31,883
39,947
Rock Island
147,546
Obama
39,157
24,934
Kendall
114,736
Romney
22,471
24,047
Total:
10,168,148
2,540,709
1,486,364
Population Obama Counties
9,108,333
Population Romney Counties
1,059,815
*
Designates "Collar Counties"
As the table indicates, the ten counties which Obama carried in 2012 account for a total of
9,108,333 people while the Romney counties only accounted for 1,059,815 people. In
summary, approximately ninety percent of the total population in the urban counties lived in
Obama counties while only ten percent of the population of the urban counties was in the
13
predominantly Romney territory. You have to descend to the sixth largest county, McHenry, to
get to the first and largest Romney County, and it is the only one of the Collar Counties to go for
the Republican. Next largest is Madison County in the Metro-East area around St. Louis and
then Sangamon County, home of the state capital, both of which are counties in the circa
200,000 to 300,000 population range which also provided Romney with a victory. Finally there
were McLean County in Central Illinois and Kendall County an exurb county in Northeastern
Illinois which fell into the Romney column and both of these counties were well under 200,000
in population.
Table 2 focuses on the fifteen largest counties and details just how severe Romney’s
disadvantages were in those big counties in Illinois. The larger counties, outside Cook and the
Collar Counties voted for Obama by 404,597 compared to 377,110 for Romney, or a 27,487
total advantage to Obama. When coupled with Obama’s margin in the Cook and the Collar
Counties displayed in Table 1, you get a popular vote total of 2,540,709 for Obama compared to
1,486,364 for Romney. Thus, the fifteen largest counties in Illinois provided a net margin of
1,054,345 for Obama’s total large county vote victory in Illinois in 2012.
Obviously then, Romney had a major problem in the urban areas although one could argue that
Obama, likewise, had a problem in the rural areas. In the presidential sweepstakes, however, it
is votes and population which ultimately count and the numbers are in the larger cities and
counties. The die was cast in the urban counties and there was virtually no way the
remaining 87 smaller and more rural counties could have overcome that margin which
favored Obama so heavily no matter how overwhelmingly they voted for Romney.
In recognition of the fact that Romney won far more counties, and more congressional districts
that Obama did in 2012, some Republican leaders in states where they control the governor’s
office and both houses of the legislature are now pushing a plan to allocate that state’s
Electoral College votes on basis of the congressional district winner. This is currently the law in
Maine and Nebraska. If this were done in large states like Florida, Virginia and Michigan, it
could significantly tilt the playing field in favor of future Republican presidential candidates.
While these are only Illinois data, this pattern existed all across the nation. As a matter of gross
geographic analysis, the central cities and the surrounding metropolitan areas, with some
exceptions in the suburban South, tended to vote heavily for Obama while the more rural the
area the more likely it was to vote for Romney. This urban-rural divide is large and has been
growing ever since the South broke from the Democratic Party starting in the 1960s and 1970s
and realigned itself with the Republicans. This pattern already existed in many parts of the
Midwest and the West contributing to and reinforcing the national’s partisan and ideological
polarization trends which have been on the increase for the past two decades.
14
Thus, the rural areas of Illinois provided their votes disproportionately to Governor Romney just
as they did nationally. This was not, however, a new voting pattern in Illinois. In many of the
rural counties they have been voting for the Republicans and even before that for the Whigs
since before the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln was still running as a Whig and then running
as the standard-bearer for the new Republican Party in 1860 and 1864. The red counties on
Map 2 are where the bedrock strength of the Republican Party has always been in Illinois and
there is voting continuity going back for generations which is very rarely broken in national or
state election returns (Key, 1966, chapter 8). This pattern, too, is a part of the historic voting
pattern for much of the Midwest which was once a crucial part of the backbone of the
Republican Party. These counties provide the foundation for the political continuity which is so
evident in much of American electoral politics, and particularly in the more rural areas.
Providing the voting returns at the county level, as Map 2 and Tables 1 and 2 do, helps to make
the point more graphically. The data are reported to the State Board of Elections by County
Clerks and other election officials and are readily available for analysis. However, the point
goes beyond analytical convenience. A part of the thesis of this paper is that the counties are
important political units in Illinois and they constitute a slice of the larger regional political
culture where the habits and patterns of voting exhibit a high level of consistency and
continuity from election to election and even generation to generation.
In fact, counties themselves also have distinct political cultures and histories and these political
norms make it much more likely that their aggregate voting returns will resemble one another
across time and elections. However, there is also room for change especially if they are
dynamic economically and there is marked in and out migration in the counties and if their
demographics are changing significantly. It is also true that a strong statewide or national
candidate can come along occasionally and help disrupt the established voting patterns at the
county and regional levels especially in high stimulus and high turnout elections.
Importantly for the future of both parties in Illinois, Obama made serious inroads in suburban
Cook County and the traditionally Republican Collar Counties around Chicago in 2008 and he
solidified those gains in 2012. Obama carried Cook County handily and four of the five
traditional Collar Counties in 2012 even when his statewide totals declined. From his 2008
Collar County coalition in 2012 Obama only lost McHenry, which is the far northwest of the
Collar Counties and home of the exurban voters who have reliably voted Republican even
though 2008 was an exception when Obama also carried McHenry County. If the Collar
Counties are trending more Democratic, and these results as well as earlier research published
in The Simon Review indicate they are, this is an important emerging political development for
Illinois (Jackson, 2004; Jackson and Gottemoller, 2007).
15
As Colby and Green argued in 1986, Downstate Illinois used to be the key to Illinois as the
suburbs voted reliably for the Republicans and Central City Chicago voted heavily for the
Democrats (Colby and Green, 1986). Today, suburban Cook and the Collar Counties are where
statewide candidates make it or get broken in Illinois politics. The Collar Counties are growing;
Central City Chicago has declined as a proportion of the statewide total; and Downstate has
both growing and declining counties, but on balance it has remained stable as a percentage of
the total state population. The suburbs are where most of the growth is and the balance of
power now resides there in Illinois politics. They have also become more diverse, especially
because of the influx of new Hispanic residents and other ethnic groups as well.
Recently the Democrats have made steady gains in those areas. In 2010 they were the keys to
the split decision realized by Republican Mark Kirk running for the U. S. Senate and for
Democrat Pat Quinn running for Governor (Jackson, 2011). Both Senator Kirk and Governor
Quinn’s victories statewide depended notably on their appeal to the suburbs. Those split
decisions were especially powered by the more moderate and Independent and split-ticket
voters in the Collar Counties. Those areas also significantly boosted the totals for Obama in
both 2008 and 2012.
It is evident that the northern and especially the northeastern counties, particularly Cook and
the Collar Counties, were the backbone of the Obama victory in Illinois because of their size.
He also carried some counties in the more urban and small city areas, such as Peoria, Rockford,
and the Quad Cities. These are areas where labor unions still maintain some political strength
and some are near to Iowa which was a battleground state with massive television spending
not present in Illinois otherwise.
Obama also ran well in St. Clair County which is an urban county in the Metro-East area around
St. Louis. There were only two counties in deep southern Illinois, Jackson and Alexander, which
voted for Obama. Jackson is the home of Southern Illinois University and Alexander has a large
African-American population. Those two deep southern counties have been long time bastions
of strength for the Democratic Party and they did not change their stripes for Romney.
Otherwise, the other southern Illinois results indicate quite a marked change since this area
used to be a stronghold for the Democratic Party and very dependable in voting for the
Democratic candidate for president as well as in statewide offices such as Governor (Leonard,
2010; Jackson and Leonard, 2011). Those counties, with the exception of Jackson and
Alexander, now have gone the same way as the once Solid South. They are still dependable
counties for the Democrats in some of the court house offices, but they routinely support
Republicans for Governor and for President.
16
This bifurcation of party allegiance or “split level” party identification is the same phenomenon
which was exhibited in the South before its transition into a predominantly one party region
over the past two decades or so. That is, the formerly loyal white Democrats voted massively
for the Democrats; then they migrated to be Independent and split-ticket voters, and then
changed fully into deeply loyal Republican voters, especially in national and state-wide
elections.
Elazar’s emphasis on the American South as the home to a “traditionalistic” political culture,
where deference to established social hierarchy and authority keep the social order stable and
in power is applicable here and is a part of the dominant political culture in the southern
sections of the state (Elazar, 1972). Southern Illinois is becoming more like its neighbors to the
south rather than transitioning into the recent voting habits typical of the Midwest or its
neighbors to the north (Jackson and Leonard, 2011).
Interestingly this emerging affinity for Republican candidates and preference for cultural
conservatism over labor union loyalty and bread-and-butter economic issues now marks many
of the counties in southern Illinois just as it is the defining characteristics of politics in the Deep
South of the old Confederacy. Culturally much of southern Illinois is now more southern than
Midwestern in its values and voting habits as much of our public opinion polling data show
(Leonard, 2010; Jackson and Leonard, 2011). The partisan realignment of much of southern
Illinois in its presidential and statewide office voting patterns now resembles the realignment of
the once Solid South from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party which took place in the
1980s and 1990s and which is now so important in the national Republican Party’s coalition.
This trend is counterbalanced by the realignment of suburban Cook and the Collar Counties
which has favored the Democrats. Those areas, which were once much homogeneous on race,
class and ethnic grounds are being transformed by the movement of new people, often
especially Hispanics and other minorities, into those formerly predominantly white suburbs. As
that movement has grown, the prospects for the state’s Democratic Party to win in those more
diverse areas have also grown.
Comparisons of 2012 to 2008
In Map 3 we examine the 2008 results and then in Map 4 we provide the comparisons by
county for the Obama versus McCain battle in 2008 and the Obama versus Romney contest in
2012. There is both considerable continuity and significant change evident from the
comparisons of the presidential election results for these two years.
17
18
Map 3 provides the color coded chart of the county by county returns for Obama versus
McCain in 2008 (Jackson, 2009). It shows that Obama carried 46 counties out of the total of
102 counties, or in other words, Obama carried slightly under half of the counties in Illinois
that year. This map shows the 2008 results were much more evenly divided geographically
between the red and blue counties with almost half of the total geography of the state in either
camp. This is more like what one would expect if the home court advantage was especially
working to Obama’s advantage in 2008 as it was. In general most Illinois voters of all
persuasions were proud of their native son and proud of the state for offering the nation the
potential to elect the first African-American to the lofty position of president of the United
States. Undoubtedly there was the familiar partisan division here with the Democrats voting
very heavily for Obama, and the Republicans voting for their own nominee, John McCain, with
the Independents split but leaning disproportionately toward Obama. However, even those
who did not vote for him tended to think well of Obama in 2008 and the state could proud of its
history of racial tolerance in its voting habits. For example, Illinois is the only state in the
modern era to have elected two African Americans, Barack Obama and Carol Mosley Braun to
be United States Senators with a third, Roland Burris, appointed to that position to fill Obama’s
remaining term.
19
20
By 2012, this situation had changed. The party lines were more prominent and the racial divide
was overlaid with ideological and geographical divisions. The old familiar Illinois regionalism
had returned, and the partisan and ideological polarization had hardened in the fires of political
conflict which marked Obama’s first term in the White House. While Illinois by a sizable
majority stayed in the Obama column, Map 4 shows the geographical distribution of the vote
for Obama versus Romney and then provides an overlay of the Obama versus McCain results.
As is evident from Map 4, Obama only carried a total of 23 counties in 2012 as compared to
46 in 2008. In other words in 2012 he lost half of the counties, or 23 counties he had carried
in 2008. Map 4 documents those counties graphically. In general most of them are in central
and northern Illinois. Two of the Obama losses also were in the traditional Democratic
strongholds of Gallatin and Pulaski in southern Illinois. Those counties where Obama lost the
presidential race in his home state in 2012 are mostly the competitive or swing counties and
some are traditionally Republican counties which he was able to attract temporarily in 2008 but
was not able to hold onto in 2012. Undoubtedly this loss was due in large part to the impact the
Great Recession had on Illinois as a state and to the toll it took on the president’s support and
job approval in Illinois and the nation after almost four years in office.
Nevertheless, although Obama lost ground, he obviously did not lose the overall election in
Illinois in 2012. Indeed, he won rather handily taking 58.57 percent of the Illinois two-party
vote. Clearly geography is less important than population, and the larger the county in
population the more likely they were to vote for Obama in Illinois and nationally. Of course,
the reciprocal of that relationship is also true with the smaller and more rural the county, the
more likely it was to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012. That population based correlation has
been true in every election of the 21st Century starting with Bush versus Gore in 2000 and
extending through Bush versus Kerry in 2008 and Obama versus McCain in 2008.
This is not an entirely new phenomenon, but it is one of relatively recent origins extending only
as far back as the recent realignment of our national political alliances. This correlation
between the rural/urban division in this country and its aggregate voting behavior has been
true in presidential politics ever since the nation underwent a partisan realignment that started
in the 1950s and 1960s and intensified in the 1970s and 1980s. This was when the South left its
traditional home in the Democratic Party and over the course of about two decades migrated
into becoming as dependable a part of the Republican Party’s core constituency as the Solid
South had been for the Democrats from the Civil War era until the 1970s. This is one of the
most important changes in American politics in the last 150 years since the Republicans were
founded in the period of 1854 through 1860.
That realignment is complete at the national level and its contours are now evident in the
Illinois presidential voting returns presented in Map 3 and Map 4 just as they are in the national
21
returns available in other sources. That is, the Republican candidate won handily all across
southern Illinois in both 2008 and 2012. In 2012 Romney won heavily in the rural areas of
central and northern Illinois where Republicans had always been strong although some of those
counties had strayed over to vote for Obama instead of McCain in 2008.
Indeed, this national realignment may reflect a larger and almost universal political norm. That
is, the rural areas in virtually all developed nations, and often even underdeveloped areas, are
usually more traditional, more conservative, more parochial, and more likely to support the
parties of the right or the more conservative political parties than the urban areas are (Almond
and Verba, 1965; Almond and Coleman,1960; Bishop, 2008). Thus, what is true in the United
States in the first part of the 21
st
Century is also true and has been for generations in other
nations where people have been given the right to vote for their leaders in free elections.
One of the objectives of this paper is to unravel some of the important explanation for the
geographic differences which have been quite evident in American presidential politics. These
differences are a fundamental part of what divides politics in Illinois and they are also endemic
to the divisive and polarized politics now faced routinely in the nation as a whole. In Table 3 we
explore some of the possible independent variables which differentiate the typically Republican
counties from the typically Democratic counties and differentiate both from the swing counties
which provide the potential for change from election to election. These variables include: the
2010 population of the county, the percent white, percent Black, percent Hispanic, median
home value, per capita income, median house-hold income, and percent below the poverty
rate for each county.
The post-mortems on the 2012 presidential election featured demographic variables and
demographic changes and trends prominently as important popular explanations for why
Obama was re-elected and how he was able to fashion a comfortable victory which was
apparently very surprising to many political analysts, as well as to the Romney campaign itself.
Most prominently featured was the changing racial and ethnic make-up of the United States.
The day after the election analysts started focusing more intently on the reduced size of the
white electorate, the importance of growth in the Hispanic population, and the unexpectedly
large rate of turnout for African-American and younger voters. All of these are typically
important explanations for voting behavior which go all the way back to the classic American
Voter research from the early 1950s (Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, 1956) and to the
classic Columbia University research team’s results from the early and mid-1940s (Berelson,
Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954). So, journalists and scholars alike have been using the major
demographic categories as personal characteristic explanations, or at least significant correlates
of the vote for the many decades since.
22
However, this is largely an individual level of analysis explanation. We are using a somewhat
different approach when we utilize the county as the unit of analysis and we have to be careful
not to over interpret the demographic correlations. However, the basic argument of this paper,
like many others in this tradition, is that the county, or any other aggregate data level of
analysis, can provide important indicators of the geographic milieu and the political culture
context in which individual voters live and work. This argument is spelled out in an earlier work
in more detail and with significant data provided on the partisanship of county level officials for
the period of 1975 through 2010 (Jackson, 2011). Thus, this voting behavior tradition, which
goes all the way back to the seminal work of V. O. Key, is also an important adjunct to our
understanding of our state or the nation’s politics (Key, 1949, 1955, 1966). That is the approach
taken in Table 3.
23
Table 3
Demographics of Presidential Vote by County Political Reward
2010
Population
Percent
White
Percent
Black
Percent
Hispani
c
Median
Home
Value
Per
Capita
Income
Median
Household
Income
Percen
t
below
Povert
y
Counties
Won by
Obama in
2012 also
won by
Obama in
2008
415,933
85.8
9.4
8.9
$143,987
$
25,993
$
51,519
14.0
Counties
Carried by
Obama in
2008 and
Lost by
Obama in
2012
82,111
93.2
6.6
5.8
$117,448
$
24,605
$ 49,732
14.1
Counties
won by
Romney in
2012 and
by McCain
in 2008
24,653
93.7
2.9
2.2
$ 92,470
$
22,932
$ 46,696
12.5
Scholars and political analysts have been predicting an ideological and partisan realignment of
American politics for generations (Key, 1955; Burnham, 1975; Phillips, 1969; Judis and Teixeria,
2002). Partisan realignments are constituted by both individual and aggregate, or cohort group
changes which in total constitute a net shift from one political party to the other. Or
alternatively, there is a net shift which leaves the same party in the majority; however, it is a
new and differently constituted majority coalition. That is the short hand version of the shift in
voting allegiance that took place in recent American politics.
Table 3 starts with the racial and ethnic compositions of the Illinois counties as they are divided
into the three types of election results provided by the 2008 versus 2010 presidential results.
24
First, and most importantly, the consistently loyal Democratic counties were the large
counties with an average 2010 population of 415,933, while the consistently loyal Republican
counties, that is, those which voted for both McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012 were the
smaller counties with an average population of only 24,653 people. The swing or more
marginal counties which voted for Obama in 2008 and for Romney in 2012 fit neatly in-between
with an average population of 82,111.
As expected the Obama counties in 2008 and 2010 are much more diverse racially and
ethnically than the Romney and McCain counties are. That is, those consistently loyal
Democratic counties which voted for Obama in both 2012 and 2008 were 85.8 percent white,
9.4 percent black, and 8.9 percent Hispanic. Those which were consistently Republican, voting
for both John McCain and Mitt Romney were also much more homogeneous with 93.7 percent
white, 2.9 percent black, and only 2.2 percent Hispanic. Those which split between voting for
Obama in 2008 but voting for Romney in 2012 again fell neatly in between. They were 93.2
percent white, 6.6 percent black, and 5.8 percent Hispanic. In the social sciences one rarely
encounters empirical data where the pattern is clearer than that found in Table 3.
These aggregate level demographic results were certainly consonant with the national picture
and the analysis provided from the exit poll data provided by the national news organizations
(See for example: The Economist , November 10, 2012, 27-29; The Washington Post,
http;/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/accessed, January 18,
2013). Those post-mortems stressed the racial and ethnic diversity of the Obama coalition and
how much his victory depended on the votes of those who in the past typically turned out at
lower rates and how well he ran among the black and brown voters while losing white voters by
a substantial margin. The turnout rate and the much vaunted Obama ground game were given
widespread credit for mobilizing the vote at historic levels among these populations in 2008
and then matching and in some states exceeding those levels again in 2012.
Another set of important demographic and socio-economic variables are those provided by
income, housing stock, and poverty rate data. These too are provided for the 2012 and 2008
results in Table 3. It is quite clear here that the median home value is highest in the
consistently Obama counties, second highest in the counties Obama carried only in 2008, and
lowest in the Romney counties. Likewise, median household income and per capita income
exhibited the same pattern. The affluent counties were also the Obama Counties, and the
next most affluent counties were the swing counties. The least prosperous counties, as
measured by median home value, per capita income and median household income, were also
the most loyal Republican Counties. (See Appendix B, C, and D for the data on each county).
The only minor variation on this overall pattern was in the percent below the poverty level
which was highest (at 14.1 percent) in the 2008 to 2012 swing counties, then next highest in the
25
consistently Democratic Counties (at 14.0 percent) and lowest (at 12.5 percent) in the
consistently Republican Counties. These differences are not great on the percent below
poverty indicator; however, as an overview they may indicate that consistently Republican
counties also have fewer people at the very lower end of the socio-economic scale, i.e. below
the poverty line. It may also suggest that the most affluent counties are also those with the
greatest income gaps (what the economists call the gini coefficient) and counter-intuitively they
are also the areas most likely to vote for the Democrats at the aggregate level (McCarty, Poole
and Rosenthal, 2006). That is certainly the case with Cook and some of the Collar Counties.
To recap, the richer and better housed counties and those with the highest per capita incomes
and highest median household income levels were also more likely to vote for Obama, and the
opposite is true for the Republican counties in both 2008 and 2012. Of course, this does not fit
the popular stereotypes that the Democrats are the party of the dependent populations, and
the Republicans are the party of the more prosperous and the wealthier people and areas.
This stereotype was reinforced somewhat during the presidential campaign when Romney in a
speech to an affluent audience at a $50,000 per ticket fundraiser in an up-scale enclave in
Florida talked about the “47%”who were dependent of governmental programs and not
persuadable to vote for him. This perspective is often capsulized in some of the media as “the
makers and the takers” who are supposed to mark the differences between the Republican and
the Democratic Party, but that is a vastly over stretched stereotype.
In addition, there are certainly predominantly rich areas and poor areas of the nation as well as
in the state of Illinois and those geographic differences have implications for public policy
making. It tends to be also true in Illinois that the rich areas disproportionately support the
state’s activities and public services which are more often needed and utilized in the poorer
areas.
As Gelman’s research at the national level shows, this transfer of income and wealth results
from the formula used in various governmental programs which tend to emphasize need and
ability to pay. This results in a national transfer of payments from what is generally called the
“blue states” to the “red states” which tend to be poorer at the aggregate level and filled with
more poor people individually. Gelman says the following in terms of his national findings:
At the state level, Democrats’ willingness to tax high earners and Republicans’
motivation to spend in poor states combine to yield large transfers from mostly
Democratic states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast to mostly Republican
states in the South and middle of the country. According to the Tax Foundation, the
poorest ten states (all of which George W. Bush carried in 2004) receive an average of
$1.60 in federal spending for every $1.00 they spend in federal taxes, while the richest
26
ten states (nine of which were won by John Kerry) receive only $0.80 on average
(Gelman, 2008, 62).
Other studies have consistently shown the same disparities in tax raising and spending patterns.
What is true nationally is also true of transfers from the rich to the poorer areas in Illinois
whether those poorer areas are on the south side of Chicago or in southern Illinois (Legislative
Research Unit, 1989). Thus, what is happening in the suburban parts of Cook County and the
five Collar Counties is particularly important in explaining Illinois politics.
Part of untangling the puzzle of the findings presented in Table 3 is rooted in the use of
aggregate versus individual level data. The analyst must be careful to avoid what statisticians
call the “ecological fallacy” or the inferring of individual level data from aggregate results
(Kramer, 1983). However, there is plenty of individual level survey and poll data to confirm the
correlation between socio-economic factors and voting. The basic generalization is that the
higher the socio-economic class, the more likely one is to vote Republican. Individual level
voting data consistently show that here are clearly tens of millions of poor, working class and
middle class people who vote for the Democrats; however, although they are not as numerous
there are also millions of the same categories who vote for the Republicans. There are millions
of comfortable and even rich Democrats just as is also true for the Republicans.
However, the argument of this paper and any analysis which takes advantage of aggregate data
is that the geographic context also matters to voters. If you take the aggregate level of analysis
provided by the county level of data, it is also clear that the geographic location and the
demographic characteristics of their communities are important in providing the context of
where the voters live, work and recreate. This life-style context is also important for their
politics influencing who their neighbors are, where they work, where they go for recreation and
go to church and their views on a wide variety of political and social issues. In general like-
minded people and those with similar economic status tend to cluster together geographically
(Brooks,2004; Bishop,2008).
Gelman describes the seemingly paradoxical nature of the individual versus aggregate level
results in the following terms:
Rich people in rich states are socially and economically more liberal than rich people in
poor states….What’s new is polarization- the increasingly ideological nature of
politics…the paradox is that polarization is going in one direction for voters and the
other direction for states. The resolution of the paradox is that the more polarized
playing field has driven rich conservative voters in poor states toward the Republicans
and rich liberals in rich states toward the Democrats, thus turning the South red and
New England and the West Coast blue and setting up a national map that is divided by
27
culture rather than class, with blue-collar West Virginia moving from solidly
Democratic…to safely Republican and suburban Connecticut going the other way
(Gelman, 2008, 4).
The dynamic Gelman describes derived from state level data also persists when the focus is
shifted to the county level in Illinois, and it illustrates some of the same party realigning trends
at the local level. Why is that cultural context so important and so much a part of the every-day
world of average voters?
Rural communities are just intrinsically different, in many ways that are politically important,
from the urban areas. People live in close proximity in the cities, and they tend to rub elbows
much more frequently and much more closely than those in the rural areas. They see public
services and public servants on a more up close and personal basis. The urbanite is more likely
to be aware of the dependence they have on governmental goods and services and to see
those services around them daily. Everything from keeping law and order on the streets, to
clearing the snow when the blizzards come, to operating the elevated or underground mass
transit systems on which millions depend to get to work or school are pretty clearly provided by
the government, and the supporting revenues have to be raised to pay for them.
Rural communities and their inhabitants almost live in a different world from their urban
counterparts. Sometimes it seems that the two populations may inhabit different political
planets. Rural dwellers are much more likely to take the concept of American individualism and
“American Exceptionalism” more personally (Kingdon, 1999). They are more likely to believe
themselves to be dependent on no one and to be more isolated from the trends and intrusions
of the global economy and the modern culture.
This may not be objectively true, as they and their jobs may well be dependent on the tides of
the global economy which beset workers universally today no matter where they live; however,
the rural resident is likely to believe that they are more independent and they do not have to
stand on the metro subway platform before taking the train to work each day. Driving a pickup
truck alone twenty five miles to work each day is a different experience. The path may be over
city, county, or state roads and highways, but the lesson of dependence on the government for
this service is not as direct or obvious. Going duck or quail hunting or fishing in a stock pond is
different from enjoying nature in the confines of Chicago’s Grant Park or walking along Lake
Michigan’s shore line. The cultural context is constantly reinforced by daily contacts and
personal interactions with peers, family and friends which tend to lead in a more conservative
direction.
Studies show that issues related to guns and gun control are particularly salient in the rural and
small town areas of the U. S. Rural dwellers are much more likely to value their guns and to
28
regard proposals for gun control to be anathema to them and to be something that urban
legislators are trying to unfairly foist off on a resistive rural population. This has been
particularly true in Illinois recently where the politics of gun control is a decidedly
geographically based fight. The rural residents and their representatives in the General
Assembly and in the Congress are staunch, even vehement advocates for the Second
Amendment and resist fiercely the various gun control measures which tend to emanate from
Chicago and which receive significant support from the legislators who represent suburban
Chicago. The battle over “concealed carry”, which found Illinois as the last holdout against
making concealed carry legal until a recent federal appellate court decision ordered the General
Assembly to fashion a change to the law, divides the state regionally and geographically more
than perhaps any other issue.
In addition, religion also divides the state and the nation in basic ways which are important
politically and which add to the ideological and partisan polarization which has developed in the
past two decades. It is well known in voting behavior that religious identification, and
especially frequency of church attendance, are important independent variables explaining
voting behavior (Flanigan and Zingale, 2006, 113-115 ). While there are certainly “mega-
churches” in the cities, the kinds of religious fervor and fundamentalism which have become
important components of the Republican coalition are more often found in rural and small
town America than in the cities (Putnam and Campbell, 2010). Conversely, the secularism and
cosmopolitan religious values and world views more often found in the cities are much more
likely to mark people who vote for the Democrats than for the Republicans (Wilcox, 2000;
Gelman, 2008, 78-79).
This is why the kinds of diversity documented in Table 3 is important in unraveling what is
taking place in the geographical, socio-economic and demographic polarization of American
politics and this case study of Illinois provides some important indicators of those larger
national trends (Hetherington, 2001).
29
30
Map 5 extends the analysis back in time through the 2004 and 2000 presidential elections and
offers a comparison between those first two elections in the 21
st
century with the 2008 and
2012 results presented in Map 4. These longitudinal results provide a picture of mostly stability
at the county level; however, it also allows us to identify the most competitive counties where
change from election to election is evident and to note where perhaps more permanent
realignment could be taking place in these swing counties.
As is evident from Map 5 there are only 13 counties that consistently voted for the Democratic
candidate for president in all four elections between 2000 and 2012. Cook County, again, is by
far the biggest and most important of these loyal Democratic counties. Three of the deep blue
counties are in southern Illinois and the metro East area and the rest are in northwestern
Illinois, near the Iowa border and notably also include Champaign County in central Illinois, the
home of the state’s largest public university. There are 54 counties which have voted
consistently for the Republicans extending from George W. Bush in 2000 through Mitt Romney
in 2012. These counties extend across much of central Illinois, much of southeastern and
southwestern Illinois and to deep southern Illinois, and included an island of Ogle and Lee
Counties in far northern Illinois. In addition, the swing counties, which were mostly Republican
except for the Obama aberration in 2008, were mostly concentrated in northern and central
Illinois.
This is by far the larger geographic region of the state taken as a whole and would appear to be
a problem for the Democrats if one takes the county level and its importance for party building
seriously, as I do. In addition, these counties constitute the most fertile ground for electing
state legislators. These are the counties where you frequently find the Republicans controlling
the State Senate and State House seats for generations no matter who they run. However, on
statewide election returns, as we have already seen above, the prospects for the Republicans
are not so promising. The loyal Democratic Counties include Cook and some of the other
bigger counties with a total population of 6,246,565. Even without Cook County, the loyal
Democratic Counties have a total population of 1,051,890. See Appendix E.
The 54 consistently loyal Republican counties include most of the smaller counties in Illinois as
well as a few medium sized ones; however, Tazwell (Pekin) is the only county over 100,000 in
population in the group. The next largest are Adams (Quincy) and Williamson (Marion) at 67
and 66 thousand respectively. The total population of the loyal Republican counties comes to
1,318,134. See Appendix F. Thus, the population differentials leave the Democrats in a clearly
advantageous position among the most loyal counties when the statewide election returns are
counted. When one examines the most competitive or the “swing counties” which include all
the Collar Counties, that is where the great majority of the state’s population, outside Cook
County lives, as we have already stressed in the earlier population data. While the Collar
31
Counties have been very Republican historically, they are becoming more diverse and
sometimes provide a majority vote for statewide Democratic candidates or help swing the
election for them. Again the real balance of power now resides in suburban Cook and the
Collar Counties as noted earlier.
There was one additional county, Madison, where the Democrats won the first three
presidential elections of this century; however, it changed from Obama in 2008 to Romney in
2012. It is the only county in the state with this particular record. Madison County is a county
in the Metro-East area and has been growing as something of a bedroom community for St.
Louis and St. Louis County which is just across the Mississippi River, and it has become an
“exurban” county for metropolitan St. Louis. Perhaps not surprisingly it resembles other outer
ring suburban counties in its movement toward the Republicans and away from Obama in 2012.
The other two deviant cases are Franklin and Perry County in deep southern Illinois. They both
voted for Al Gore in 2000, and then that was the end of their loyalty to the national Democrats.
These two counties were formerly strongholds of the Democratic Party and had been a part of
the southern Illinois bedrock for the Democrats virtually since the Civil War. However, as was
explored above, parts of southern Illinois are in a realigning process which will be explored in
more detail in the next section of this paper. These two counties still have some Democrats left
at the Court House; however, they have not voted for the party’s national standard bearer since
Al Gore ran in 2000 and they did not vote for the Democrat for Governor in 2010. This is very
similar to what has happened in the southern states which make up the Old Confederacy.
Implications for Realignment
The New Deal Coalition which originally was glued together by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
in the wake of the Great Depression dominated American politics from the 1930s easily into the
1960s, and arguably there were echoes of it being still intact and supporting the election of
Jimmy Carter in 1976. However, the old New Deal Coalition was inherently unstable. It
contained almost equal parts of the liberal base in the Northeastern, Midwestern and Western
cities aligned with the most conservative elements in the nation found in the South, and
especially in the rural South. It contained union members and union bosses who had to live
with and a find modus vivendi with what V. O. Key called “the big mules” of southern politics,
the planters, business owners and extractive industries owners and operators who were
virulently anti-union and pro Right-to-Work laws (Key, 1949).
Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s this coalition contained the inchoate and increasingly
assertive civil rights movement, originally grounded in the black churches and in such liberal
unions as the United Auto Workers, the United Mine Workers, the Laborers, and the
32
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. These unions and the civil rights leaders increasingly faced
off against the most segregationist public officials, especially the southern Governors like Orval
Faubus, Ross Barnett, Lester Maddox, and especially George Wallace who were both racists and
vehemently opposed to unions and protective of their state’s Right-to-Work laws all of which
constituted a coherent public policy package for these governors and their allies in the state
legislatures.
These were inherent contradictions in Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition which could no longer be
papered over and contained. As the civil right leaders and their foot soldiers in the field
demonstrated, marched and attacked the very structure of state supported segregation, the
walls of American apartheid began to give way and later fell. Along with that fall, the New Deal
Coalition crumbled and had to be reassembled with different components, and the whole
American party structure went through a fundamental transition that culminated in the
partisan realignment and the deep partisan polarization that undergirds all of American politics,
and especially American presidential and congressional politics in the second decade of the 21
st
Century.
The Obama Coalition (or it could be termed the “Clinton-Obama” coalition since it started with
Bill Clinton’s presidency) has some of the key elements of the old Roosevelt Coalition, i.e. a
base in the cities and the unions, the “symbol specialists” who work in the media and the
creative arts, and many upper-middle and upper-class people who work in knowledge based
jobs in what Judis and Teixeria call the “ideopolis” (Judis and Teixeria, 2002). In their
provocative book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, published just over a decade ago Judis
and Teixeira applied their concept to Illinois in the following geographic terms:
Across the entire state, the Democrats’ gains in Illinois are almost exclusively in the
state’s ideopolises….Fortunately for the Democrats, the state’s growth has been
concentrated in the ideopolis counties. The greatest increases in population during the
1990s came (in this order) in the four ideopolis counties of Cook, DuPage, Lake, and Will.
If this continues, the Democrats’ hold over bellwether Illinois looks secure for the early
twenty-first century (Judis and Teixeria, 2002, 103).
The demographic and political developments in Illinois during the first twelve years of the 21
st
Century clearly support their thesis. The two presidential victories for Obama in 2008 and 2012
also seem to support their predictions for national politics. Only the continued Republican
control of the U. S. House of Representatives points in the opposite direction. The House is
particularly defined by the distribution of the population, and gives a structural edge to the
Republicans which coupled with the Republican victories in the state legislatures in 2010 gave
them a real advantage in the redistricting process attendant the 2010 Census.
33
This advantage, in turn, helped the Republicans continue their control of a majority of the
House in 2012 in spite of it being a very good year for the Democrats overall and a year in which
they won more popular votes in total than the Republicans did. It also should be noted that
the Democrats gained a net of four new House seats in Illinois in the 2012 elections, and this
resulted from the advantage the Illinois Democrats enjoyed in 2011 of controlling the
redistricting process just as the Republicans did in some thirty of the other states. So, in this
sense, the Democrats in Illinois were isolated from the national trends by their locally and
geographically based strength in the state’s General Assembly which translated into a marked
Democratic advantage in the Illinois House delegation.
So, in 2012 the Democrats and Barack Obama prospered nationally and nowhere was that
prosperity more evident than in Obama’s home state of Illinois. Obama put together a national
coalition which carried him to a resounding electoral victory in 2008 which was then reaffirmed
with his re-election, albeit by a narrower margin, in 2012. In the wake of the 2012 results
which were so disappointing from a Republican perspective, there was much soul-searching
and much analysis devoted to trying to redirect the party’s future and map a path back to a
more competitive electoral strategy. The Democrats were making their own long term strategic
plans, and a part of it had to be based in geography and driven by changing demographics
(Rothenberg, 2012).
In national terms the Clinton-Obama Coalition has lost a key element of the old Roosevelt
Coalition, the white South, which made it so unwieldy and so internally contradictory from its
inception. In other words, the new Democratic Coalition, assembled first by Bill Clinton, and
then mobilized and re-energized by Barack Obama is much more stable and more coherent
ideologically and issue-wise than the New Deal Coalition was. The same is true of the modern
Republican Coalition which opposes it. The two adversarial coalitions are now deeply
entrenched, and ideological and geographical polarization is what marks 21
st
Century American
politics (Gelman, 2008; Levensdusky, 2009; McCarthy, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2008; Fiorina,
2005).
Illinois has been in the forefront of that transition, providing significant leadership and serving
as a proving ground for some of its major policy initiatives. Illinois, like the nation as a whole is
now divided and deeply polarized The state epitomizes much of what has happened and is
happening in American politics at the grassroots level. This study, especially grounded in the
basic electoral maps of Illinois shows the contours of those changes, and the underlying
continuity which conditions and shapes those changes as graphically as any other state in the
union could. The fact that Illinois is also the home state of President Barack Obama simply
makes the story even more interesting and compelling as our state history is a microcosm of
the nation’s history since the turn of the century.
34
Conclusion
At the end of the 2009 paper on Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election of 2008, I
wrote the following words about the trends in Illinois and nationally. The same words seem
even more apt now in the wake of a 2012 presidential election where the demographics of a
changing America seemed to be the major theoretical explanation for why Obama won more
handily than many observers thought possible and why the Democrats were able to expand
their margins in the U. S. Senate, and pick up a net of eight seats in the House even though that
level of Democratic success seemed quite improbable going into the election.
Part of the thesis of this paper is that the changes in the electoral map may be
the wave of the future for Illinois politics and they may also be a metaphor for the larger
demographic and political trends which mark the transitions underway in the nation at
large. Most notably for this thesis, the whole segment of northeastern Illinois is where
most of the people in the state live. It is the fastest growing section of Illinois, and it all
went for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. This conversion of the Collar
Counties has been underway for some time now in Illinois politics; however, it has been
reinforced and accelerated by the 2008 election. As the suburban counties, along with
Cook County outside the city become more and more heterogeneous, they are also
becoming more Democratic. Those fast growing metropolitan areas, like the rest of
urban America, are now the home of a much more racially and ethnically mixed
population and they make their livings in a wide variety of ways not always associated
with the traditional economic base of the older more homogeneous and more
prosperous view of the suburbs left over from the 1950s and 1960s. Consequently, the
suburban ring around Chicago is no longer the predictably deliverable base of the
statewide Republican Party that it was [previously] (Jackson, 2009, 11-12).
We now have the advantage of four more years of observation and two state elections and two
national elections to provide additional perspective since those words were written. We also
have the advantage of the data provided by the 2010 U. S. Census. All the demographic trends,
both nationally and in Illinois, are in the same direction presaged by the observations written in
2009. That is, the diversity of the United States, and of the State of Illinois, continues to grow.
Racial and ethnic minorities made up a larger proportion, and white voters made up a smaller
proportion of the 2012 electorate than at any time in history.
To be sure, white voters still constituted 72 percent of the national total and they voted for
Romney over Obama by a 59 to 39 percent margin. However, that vastly disproportionate
racial margin was not enough and the combination of African-Americans (93% Obama);
Hispanic Americans (71 percent Obama), Asian-Americans (73 percent Obama), young voters,
18-29 (60 percent Obama), and women voters (55 percent Obama) was just too much for
35
Romney and the Republicans to overcome in spite of the fact that the kind of advantage they
enjoyed among white voters would have been sufficient for a comfortable national victory in
past elections (The Economist, using CNN exit poll, November 10, 2012, 27-29; Washington
Post, http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/ accessed January 18,
2013).
This, of course, has led to a lot of soul-searching on the part of the Republican Party with regard
to what they should do about losing the presidential election and the U. S. Senate in face of
their very high and very genuine expectations that they were going to win (For just one of many
examples see: Rothenberg, December 19, 2012). This unexpected loss was doubly hard to take
for many of their supporters and their interest group base since the total spent to defeat
Obama alone is projected to reach approximately one billion dollars. So, one might well ask,
and many Republican donors are asking, what did they get for their investment of tens of
millions of dollars in these campaigns? Will they be as ready next time to spring into action
with major campaign funds for whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be? In addition,
the 2014 mid-term elections are looming and the candidates for both parties will be almost
completely settled by the end of 2013. Which party will have the better talking points as they
try to convince first-tier candidates to run for the competitive and open seats in Congress, a
decision which has to be made by December of 2013 in most states.
The electoral clock on politics in the United States and in Illinois never stops. A sterling victory,
like the one scored by Obama and the Senate Democrats on November 6
th
, 2012 is enough to
give the Democrats something to build on for 2014 and 2016. However, the Republicans still
control the U. S. House by a 234 to 201 margin. Since part of that margin is due to the fact that
growing out of their 2010 mid-term election victories the Republicans controlled the remap
process in 30 states and thus were able to ensure friendly Republican maps for much of the
next decade and they also control 30 out of the 50 Governorships.
Those are firm foundations for a Republican renaissance in either 2014 or 2016. They can also
take comfort in the fact that the party which holds the White House almost always loses some
seats in the Congress in the midterm elections, and this trend is more marked in the second
term of a sitting president than in the first term. However, the Republicans must sort out some
of the basic questions about their message, the audience they plan to court, their most
important policy positions and their perceived appeal to the more reactionary elements of
American society especially those located in the South and in some of the more rural areas of
the county. In order to broaden their base the Republicans cannot continue to narrow their
focus to the loyal core that carried George W. Bush to the White House, narrowly, in 2000 and
2004. To do so invites continued electoral losses.
36
Demographics may not be destiny entirely in American politics, but it goes a long way toward
charting the political course for the nation’s future. Contrary to some of the post-election
commentary, it is not stylistic matters that dog the Republican Party among the groups they
lost so badly in 2008 and 2012. Speaking to the voters more gently and more diplomatically is
not enough to change their voting proclivities although some style points among some of the
more unenlightened members of the Republican Party also hurt their cause in several crucial
Senate races.
However, those candidates expressing their retrograde views were mostly reflecting issue and
values-based positions they genuinely and fervently advocated. It is primarily substance and
policy rather than cosmetics that really matters. This is the major challenge the Republicans
have to deal with as they try to chart both their immediate future heading into the 2014 mid-
term elections and as they inevitably start to handicap their various presidential nomination
favorites for 2016.
The pendulum usually swings, and in time the out party becomes the in-party. That cycle may
also hold true for 2016. It is widely recognized that it is very difficult for one party to win three
presidential elections consecutively in the United States, and the Republicans will have an
advantage in 2016; however, such an electoral swing is not inevitable. Nothing in politics ever
is. It takes rational thought and strategic planning, something both parties will need to engage
in assiduously if they are going to solidify their base and reach out to independents and attract
new supporters in the near future. It is a planning effort devoted to building their future and
trying to ensure their party’s success and continuity that should occupy most of the attention of
the leaders of both parties, in Illinois and nationally, and that planning is reinforced best by
winning elections. That is why 2012 was so important for the Democrats and Republicans alike,
and why they will need to plan very strategically for the party building and party branding steps
they take in preparation for 2014 and 2016.
37
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40
Appendix A
Illinois Counties Votes for President in 2012
Votes for Obama
Votes for Romney
Percent for Obama
Percent for Romney
Adams
9,648
20,416
31.5
66.7
Alexander
1,965
1,487
56.1
42.5
Bond
3,020
4,095
41.2
55.8
Boone
9,883
11,096
46.3
51.9
Brown
787
1,513
33.3
64.0
Bureau
8,134
8,164
48.9
49.1
Calhoun
1,080
1,440
41.9
55.9
Carroll
3,665
3,555
49.6
48.1
Cass
2,053
2,707
42.2
55.7
Champaign
40,831
35,312
51.9
44.9
Christian
5,494
8,885
37.3
60.3
Clark
2,591
5,144
33.0
65.4
Clay
1,584
4,190
26.8
70.9
Clinton
5,596
10,524
34.0
63.9
Coles
9,262
11,631
43.4
54.5
Cook
1,488,537
495,542
74.0
24.6
Crawford
2,858
5,585
33.1
64.7
Cumberland
1,641
3,509
31.0
66.3
DeKalb
21,207
18,934
51.6
46.1
De Witt
2,601
4,579
35.4
62.3
Douglas
2,430
5,334
30.8
67.5
DuPage
199,460
195,046
49.7
48.6
Edgar
2,565
5,132
32.8
65.6
Edwards
754
2,405
23.4
74.5
Effingham
3,861
12,501
23.2
75.2
Fayette
2,853
5,951
31.7
66.0
Ford
1,656
4,229
27.5
70.2
Franklin
7,254
10,267
40.5
57.3
Fulton
8,328
6,632
54.2
43.2
Gallatin
1,029
1,492
40.0
58.0
Greene
2,023
3,451
36.0
61.4
Grundy
9,451
11,343
44.5
53.4
Hamilton
1,269
2,566
32.2
65.1
Hancock
3,650
5,271
40.1
57.9
Hardin
742
1,535
31.8
65.9
Henderson
1,978
1,541
55.4
43.2
Henry
12,332
11,583
50.5
47.5
Iroquois
3,413
9,120
26.7
71.3
41
Jackson
13,319
9,864
55.5
41.1
Jasper
1,436
3,514
28.5
69.7
Jefferson
6,089
9,811
37.3
60.1
Jersey
3,667
6,039
36.8
60.6
Jo Daviess
5,667
5,534
49.6
48.4
Johnson
1,572
3,963
27.7
69.9
Kane
90,332
88,335
49.7
48.6
Kankakee
21,595
23,136
47.3
50.7
Kendall
22,471
24,047
47.4
50.7
Knox
13,451
9,408
57.6
40.3
Lake
153,757
129,764
53.5
45.1
LaSalle
23,073
23,256
48.8
49.2
Lawrence
2,011
3,857
33.6
64.4
Lee
6,937
8,059
45.2
52.5
Livingston
5,020
9,753
33.4
64.9
Logan
3,978
7,844
33.0
65.1
McDonough
5,967
6,147
47.9
49.4
McHenry
59,797
71,598
44.5
53.3
McLean
31,883
39,947
43.4
54.4
Macon
22,780
25,309
46.6
51.8
Macoupin
9,464
10,946
45.0
52.1
Madison
58,922
60,608
48.1
49.5
Marion
6,225
9,248
39.3
58.5
Marshall
2,455
3,290
41.8
56.1
Mason
2,867
3,265
45.5
51.9
Massac
2,092
4,278
32.2
65.9
Menard
2,100
3,948
34.1
64.2
Mercer
4,507
3,876
52.6
45.2
Monroe
6,215
10,888
35.5
62.3
Montgomery
5,058
6,776
41.7
55.8
Morgan
5,806
7,972
41.2
56.6
Moultrie
2,144
3,784
35.4
62.5
Ogle
9,514
13,422
40.7
57.4
Peoria
40,209
36,774
51.3
46.9
Perry
3,819
5,507
39.8
57.5
Piatt
3,090
5,413
35.5
62.2
Pike
2,278
4,860
31.3
66.7
Pope
650
1,512
29.3
68.0
Pulaski
1,389
1,564
46.1
51.9
Putnam
1,559
1,502
49.7
47.9
Randolph
5,759
8,290
39.9
57.4
Richland
2,362
4,756
32.4
65.3
Rock Island
39,157
24,934
60.2
38.4
42
St. Clair
67,285
50,125
56.2
41.8
Saline
3,701
6,806
34.5
63.5
Sangamon
42,107
50,225
44.7
53.3
Schuyler
1,727
2,069
44.4
53.2
Scott
910
1,587
35.6
62.1
Shelby
3,342
6,843
32.2
65.8
Stark
1,095
1,528
41.1
57.4
Stephenson
10,165
10,512
48.1
49.8
Tazewell
24,438
35,335
40.0
57.9
Union
3,137
4,957
37.7
59.6
Vermillion
12,878
16,892
42.5
55.7
Wabash
1,590
3,478
31.0
67.7
Warren
4,044
3,618
51.9
46.4
Washington
2,450
4,792
33.0
64.5
Wayne
1,514
5,988
19.7
77.8
White
2,188
4,731
31.0
67.0
Whiteside
14,833
10,448
57.6
40.5
Will
144,229
128,969
52.0
46.5
Williamson
10,647
17,909
36.4
61.2
Winnebago
61,732
55,138
51.9
46.3
Woodford
5,572
12,961
29.5
68.7
Total
3,019,512
2,135,216
Source:
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/
43
Appendix B
Counties Carried by Obama in 2008 and Lost by Obama in 2012
2010
Population
%
Whit
e
%
Black
%
Hispanic
Median
Home Value
Per Capita
Income
Median
Household
Income
%
below
Poverty
1
Alexander
8,238
61.6
35.8
2.0
56,300
14,617
27,727
25.8
2
Carroll
15,387
97.2
1.0
3.1
102,500
26,196
45,433
13.1
3
Champaign
201,081
74.9
12.7
5.5
147,800
$25,226
44,462
21.8
4
Cook
5,194,675
66.0
25.0
24.4
256,900
29,920
54,598
15.8
5
Dekalb
105,160
88.3
6.8
10.5
188,100
24,547
54,436
15.9
6
DuPage
916,924
82.3
5.1
13.6
309,800
38,405
77,598
6.2
7
Fulton
37,069
94.3
3.8
2.5
80,800
21,071
42,963
13.7
8
Henderson
7,331
98.1
0.3
1.2
82,900
23,237
47,944
11.4
9
Henry
50,486
96.3
1.8
4.9
109,900
25,931
50,698
10.2
10
Jackson
60,218
78.5
14.7
4.3
95,100
19,619
32,896
29.1
11
Jo Daviess
22,678
97.8
0.6
2.8
142,200
28,659
52,487
8.5
12
Kane
515,269
87.4
6.1
31.1
241,600
29,864
69,496
10.1
13
Knox
52,919
89.1
7.6
4.9
80,700
21,336
40,112
17.2
14
Lake
703,462
83.2
7.4
20.3
280,900
38,512
79,666
8.2
15
Mercer
16,434
98.4
0.4
1.9
98,200
25,878
51,216
9.5
16
Peoria
186,494
75.7
17.9
4.0
121,900
28,743
50,689
15.4
17
Putnam
6,006
97.8
0.8
4.3
126,800
25,510
52,409
11.6
18
Rock Island
147,546
85.9
9.3
11.9
113,100
25,609
46,726
12.4
19
St. Clair
270,056
65.8
30.5
3.4
126,300
25,475
50,109
16.3
20
Warren
17,707
95.3
2.1
8.9
84,700
20,373
42,773
14.5
44
21
Whiteside
58,498
95.8
1.7
11.2
99,700
24,370
46,444
11.7
22
Will
677,560
81.6
11.5
15.9
236,300
30,199
76,453
7.1
23
Winnebago
295,266
82.1
12.5
11.2
129,200
24,544
47,597
16.8
Mean:
415,933
85.8
9.4
8.9
143,987
25,993
$51,519
14.0
45
Appendix C
Counties which voted for Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008
2010
Population
%
White
%
Black
%
Hispanic
Median
Home
Value
Per
Capita
Income
Median
Household
Income
%
below
Poverty
1
Adams
67,103
93.9
3.6
1.3
99,900
24,798
45,792
12.7
2
Bond
17,768
91.3
6.5
3.2
107,300
24,166
50,672
10.5
3
Brown
6,937
78.6
19.0
5.9
80,000
19,704
42,014
12.1
4
Christian
34,800
96.7
1.7
1.5
82,000
3,125
43,964
15.8
5
Clark
16,335
98.2
0.5
1.3
84,700
24,338
47,933
10.2
6
Clay
13,815
97.9
0.5
1.3
71,500
21,577
38,905
16.9
7
Clinton
37,762
94.3
3.8
2.9
125,200
26,380
57,246
8.0
8
Crawford
19,817
93.3
4.9
2.1
70,000
23,387
43,923
16.4
9
Cumberland
11,048
98.0
0.7
0.9
82,100
21,715
43,255
13.1
10
De Witt
16,561
97.5
0.7
2.2
104,400
25,914
48,750
7.9
11
Douglas
19,900
97.7
0.6
6.4
95,000
22,339
47,921
10.2
12
Edgar
18,576
98.3
0.6
1.2
72,400
23,897
42,947
14.9
13
Edwards
6,721
98.0
0.7
1.0
61,500
20,907
39,071
11.5
14
Effingham
34,242
98.2
0.4
1.9
108,100
25,566
50,938
10.7
15
Fayette
22,140
93.9
4.6
1.5
78,400
22,419
43,081
16.8
16
Ford
14,081
97.6
0.9
2.4
89,900
25,302
50,332
9.2
17
Franklin
39,561
97.7
0.5
1.4
63,200
19,668
36,383
18.5
18
Greene
13,886
97.8
1.1
0.9
71,800
22,366
42,193
12.8
19
Hamilton
8,457
98.1
0.6
1.4
74,100
22,471
39,000
10.0
20
Hancock
19,104
98.0
0.4
1.1
81,700
23,027
43,567
12.8
21
Hardin
4,320
97.5
0.5
1.4
65,700
18,749
30,875
23.8
46
22
Iroquois
29,718
97.2
1.0
5.7
99,400
24,563
48,248
11.5
23
Jasper
9,698
98.4
0.3
0.9
82,700
22,917
47,731
7.6
24
Jefferson
38,827
88.7
8.7
2.2
87,000
22,032
42,679
17.2
25
Jersey
22,985
97.5
0.5
1.1
120,800
24,940
54,469
8.9
26
Johnson
12,582
89.9
8.5
3.1
93,400
17,328
42,172
11.6
27
Lawrence
16,833
88.5
10.0
3.5
68,300
17,050
38,326
16.2
28
Lee
36,031
92.4
5.2
5.1
114,700
25,303
49,451
9.5
29
Livingston
38,950
92.8
5.2
4.1
105,600
23,530
52,835
10.7
30
Logan
30,305
89.8
7.9
3.1
95,700
22,136
48,714
11.1
31
Marion
39,437
93.5
4.1
1.5
71,300
21,418
40,097
16.5
32
Marshall
12,640
98.0
0.5
2.7
103,200
25,600
51,642
9.3
33
Massac
15,429
91.5
5.9
2.0
80,500
20,044
40,885
16.7
34
Menard
12,705
97.6
0.9
1.1
115,200
26,300
56,943
7.9
35
Monroe
32,957
98.1
0.4
1.4
201,300
31,570
69,291
5.6
36
Morgan
35,547
91.2
6.3
2.2
93,000
23,598
44,731
15.0
37
Moultrie
14,846
98.3
0.5
1.0
93,300
24,078
48,982
10.5
38
Ogle
53,497
9.8
1.1
9.1
153,400
25,803
57,094
10.3
39
Perry
22,350
88.9
8.8
2.8
76,600
18,469
41,333
17.0
40
Piatt
16,729
97.9
0.6
1.2
122,200
27,452
58,837
6.5
41
Pike
16,430
96.9
1.8
1.1
75,300
20,383
40,668
16.2
42
Pope
4,470
91.4
6.7
1.5
87,400
20,603
38,651
11.9
43
Randolph
33,476
88.4
10.0
2.7
88,700
21,442
46,148
12.4
44
Richland
16,233
97.3
0.7
1.4
76,000
23,922
42,305
13.4
45
Saline
24,913
93.0
4.3
1.6
69,400
21,626
36,083
17.0
47
46
Scott
5,355
98.6
0.2
0.9
83,100
27,955
50,702
8.0
47
Shelby
22,363
98.5
0.5
1.0
86,500
22,522
44,689
10.5
48
Stark
5,994
97.7
0.7
1.2
86,000
24,952
49,693
12.1
49
Tazewell
135,394
96.4
1.3
2.0
128,900
27,395
54,617
8.5
50
Union
17,808
96.4
1.1
5.1
88,200
20,138
40,696
20.5
51
Wabash
11,947
97.2
0.8
1.4
79,500
23,629
47,426
12.7
52
Washington
14,716
97.9
0.8
1.5
104,400
25,177
53,036
8.4
53
Wayne
16,760
98.0
0.5
1.1
69,300
22,319
40,654
13.6
54
White
14,665
98.0
0.6
1.3
67,800
23,398
43,639
15.1
55
Williamson
66,357
93.9
4.2
2.0
89,100
22,903
56,576
16.9
56
Woodford
38,664
97.4
0.7
1.5
152,200
29,886
66,198
7.2
N=56
Average:
24,653
93.7
2.9
2.2
92,470
22,932
$ 46,696
12.5
48
Appendix D
Counties Carried by Obama in 2008 and Lost by Obama in 2012
2010
Populati
on
%
White
%
Black
%
Hispanic
Median
Home
Value
Per
Capita
Income
Median
Household
Income
%
below
Poverty
1
Boone
54,165
93.2
2.5
20.3
171,300
26,323
61,613
10.2
2
Bureau
34,978
96.8
0.8
7.9
103,800
25,344
48,046
10.7
3
Calhaun
5,089
99.0
0.1
1.1
109,400
24,643
48,958
12.4
4
Cass
13,642
94.2
3.8
17.3
76,900
19,947
41,139
15.5
5
Coles
58,873
93.0
4.2
2.3
93,100
21,669
38,294
22.1
6
Gallatin
5,589
98.0
0.4
1.3
58,700
22,674
38,577
18.2
7
Grundy
50,063
96.2
1.6
8.4
191,500
28,159
64,592
7.4
8
Kankakee
113,449
81.3
15.5
9.2
147,700
23,190
49,266
15.0
9
Kendall
114,736
88.4
6.1
15.9
239,300
31,325
82,649
3.8
10
La Salle
113,924
95.6
2.1
8.3
127,500
25,439
52,469
10.4
11
Macon
110,768
79.8
16.4
2.0
92,300
25,797
47,987
15.0
12
Macoupin
47,765
97.5
1.0
1.0
94,900
24,141
48,739
11.8
13
Madison
269,282
89.0
8.0
2.9
124,300
26,939
53,143
13.3
14
Mason
14,666
97.8
0.6
1.0
81,500
23,992
42,929
15.5
15
McDonoug
h
32,612
90.4
5.4
2.8
87,000
18,854
34,186
23.0
16
McHenry
308,760
94.3
1.3
11.7
243,500
32,318
76,909
6.9
17
McLean
169,572
85.5
7.6
4.6
154,600
29,425
59,410
13.1
18
Montgome
ry
30,104
95.3
3.4
1.6
79,500
22,205
41,925
14.6
19
Pulaski
6,161
64.9
32.3
1.7
50,500
17,732
31,712
22.7
20
Sangamon
197,465
83.9
12.0
1.9
120,900
29,167
53,508
13.4
49
21
Schuyler
7,544
95.6
3.2
1.6
72,500
22,215
43,902
15.2
22
Stephenso
n
47,711
87.5
9.3
3.1
104,500
23,413
43,410
14.7
23
Vermilion
81,625
83.6
13.3
4.4
76,100
21,000
40,463
18.8
Mean:
82,111
93.2
6.6
5.8
117,448
24,605
49,732
14.1
50
Appendix E
The Most Loyal Democratic Counties
(Voted for the Party's Presidential Nominee 2000-2012)
2010 Population
Alexander
8,238
Champaign
201,081
Cook
5,194,675
Fulton
37,069
Henderson
7,331
Jackson
60,218
Knox
52,919
Mercer
16,434
Peoria
186,494
Putnam
6,006
Rock Island
147,546
St. Clair
270,056
Whiteside
58,498
Total
6,246,565
51
Appendix F
The Most Loyal Republican Counties
(Voted for the Party's Presidential Nominee 2000-2012)
2010 Population
1
Adams
67,103
2
Bond
17,768
3
Brown
6,937
4
Christian
34,800
5
Clark
16,335
6
Clay
13,815
7
Clinton
37,762
8
Crawford
19,817
9
Cumberland
11,048
10
Dewitt
16,561
11
Douglas
19,900
12
Edgar
18,576
13
Edwards
6,721
14
Effingham
34,242
15
Fayette
22,140
16
Ford
14,081
17
Greene
13,886
18
Hamilton
8,457
19
Hancock
19,104
20
Hardin
4,320
21
Iroquois
29,218
22
Jasper
9,698
23
Jefferson
38,827
24
Jersey
22,985
25
Johnson
12,582
26
Lawrence
16,833
27
Lee
36,031
28
Livingston
38,950
29
Logan
30,305
30
Marion
39,437
31
Marshall
12,640
32
Massac
15,429
33
Menard
12,705
34
Monroe
32,957
35
Morgan
35,547
36
Moutrie
14,846
37
Ogle
53,497
38
Piatt
16,729
52
39
Pike
16,430
40
Pope
4,470
41
Randolph
33,476
42
Richland
16,233
43
Saline
24,913
44
Scott
5,355
45
Shelby
22,363
46
Stark
5,994
47
Tazewell
135,394
48
Union
17,808
49
Wabash
11,947
50
Washington
14,716
51
Wayne
16,760
52
White
14,665
53
Williamson
66,357
54
Woodford
38,664
Total
1,318,134
