Illinois
			21 votes
			Kerry - 11 points
			The last time this state voted Republican....
			... terrorists exploded a Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.
			Race
			- Heavily white - Significant African-American population - Small Latino population
			If it were up the Caucasians this blue state would be red - but not by much. Whites only voted 51-48 for Bush. Not bad considering how well he did among whites elsewhere. But the Democrats' margin came from the 18% of Illinoisans who are minorities. Almost nine of ten blacks and more than three of four Latinos voted Kerry.
			Age
			Seniors - slightly Bush Everybody else - Kerry
			Bush won the seniors vote - barely. But he got no help elsewhere with the youngest voters providing the biggest bump for Kerry at 64%.
			Economics
			50,000-75,000 - tied Above 200,000 - tied Everybody else - Kerry
			Interesting setup here. At first it looks like a standard rich to poor distribution. Kerry wins by wide margins at the lowest incomes and his margin shrinks as incomes rise until Bush ties him about dead center in the middle class. But the upper middle class shows the margin widening out again - sharply. Kerry actually scores victories among those making $100,000-$200,000. Above $200,000 however it narrows back to a dead heat. A bit like a more liberal version of the effect found in Connecticut and Colorado.
			Politics
			- Average partisanship - Significant Democratic tilt - Good Democratic loyalty - Below average Republican loyalty - Independents tilt significantly Democratic
			All blue across the board. Here a five-point Democratic margin is magnified by higher-than-normal party loyalty. The Republicans suffer a worse, though not fatal, defection rate. The key to keeping the state is the independents who voted for Kerry by 16 points.
			Ideology
			- Slight conservative tilt
			A four point conservative advantage, but liberal loyalty to Democrats here (91%) is starkly higher than conservative fidelity to the Republicans (79%). Also 58% of the moderates vote with their liberal brethern.
			Religion
			- Protestant plurality - Large Catholic population
			Protestants here voted for Bush by 11 points but a large Catholic minority is there to keep them in check. Like other Upper Midwest states Illinois Catholics were friendly to Kerry, even if their Protestant friends weren't.
			Demographics
			-  Predominately suburban - Large urban population - Sizable rural population
			The suburbs basically split. Bush won them by only one point. So it came down to a contest between the urban and rural areas. It would not have been a fair fight - even if the rural folks weren't outnumbered. The urban vote delivered itself to Kerry by better than 40 points. Bush squeezed out a rural win by only seven. Interestingly however he did win smaller urban (that is non-Chicago) areas by four. As for regional differences, one word: Chicago. The city and to a lesser extent its Cook County suburbs gave Kerry unbeatable margins. Republicans dominated downstate Illinois but were simply outnumbered.
			Other factors
			The vote is more lopsided than the issues may show. The public here is divided on both the war and Bush. Both are disapproved of, but only by four points.

The Land of the Blue

Where centrism and progressivism meet