Politics & Government
Trump vs. Biden: How Will Illinois Vote?
Illinois has voted for a Democrat the past seven elections, and this election is likely to be no different.
ACROSS ILLINOIS — While it’s still murky which way some key battleground states will swing this election, it’s clear whom Illinois voters will likely pick for president. The state that Hillary Clinton easily won over Donald Trump in 2016, and that selected Joe Biden in its primary, appears again likely to go for Biden over Trump.
Biden has consistently led the polls in the state, which has leaned left since electing Bill Clinton in 1992. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won Illinois with 55.8 percent of the vote compared with Trump’s 38.76 percent.
Find out what's happening in Across Illinoisfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Some are predicting this election could go down as the largest landslide win for a Democratic presidential candidate in modern history.
On Monday, Research Co. showed Biden with a 19-point advantage over Trump in Illinois, 59 to 40 percent, among decided voters. Decided voters between 18 and 34 years old preferred Biden by a 2-to-1 margin, 66 to 32 percent.
Find out what's happening in Across Illinoisfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Final Presidential Polls: Trump Closes Gap In Key States
And it’s clear there is a lot at play this election. The coronavirus pandemic and a nation inflamed over police shootings and racial injustice have been among the hotly debated topics with this year’s candidates.
Some of Illinois' loudest voices in support of securing supplies and keeping residents safe and healthy during the pandemic, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, have publicly slammed Trump several times over the past year for dropping the ball and even for being a bad role model.
Last month, Pritzker told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump’s crowded, maskless rallies — being held just weeks after a "superspreader event" in the Rose Garden —"made it nearly impossible" for any state to fully reopen.
"This pandemic has been around now for seven to eight months, and without much help from the federal government we've been fighting it off," Pritzker said.
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Trump and Pritzker have also battled on Twitter.
But beyond that, Illinois will also likely have a soft spot for Biden, who was the vice president to President Barack Obama, a former Chicago resident who previously served as both an Illinois state senator and the U.S. senator from Illinois. In addition, other top political leaders in the state are Democrats, including Pritzker, Secretary of State Jesse White and Speaker of the House Michael Madigan.
In the March primary, Biden secured a solid win with 59 percent of the vote over Bernie Sanders' 36 percent in Illinois.
Illinois, which is thought of as a blue state and is primed to hand over its 20 electorate votes to Biden this election, has historically been evenly split on how it has voted over the past century.
Prior to 1992, Illinois voters picked Republican presidential candidates for two decades, from 1968 to 1988. For the past seven elections, it has been Democratic candidates who have secured the win.
And since 1900, Illinois voted for a Republican candidate 50 percent of the time and a Democratic candidate for the rest of the presidential elections, according to Ballotpedia.com. Even more notable, since 1900, Illinois has selected the winning president 88.33 percent of the time.
A 2016 NPR analysis found that Illinois is “more accurate” in picking its presidents than “partisan.” In addition, the demographics of the state are the most similar to the demographics of the entire country, making Illinois the “most perfectly average state,” according to the analysis.
"It's as diverse as the country, but not overly diverse," Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, told NPR. "It's probably a little more urban than the country as a whole because of the greater Chicago metropolitan area, but a lot of that is the suburbs, and the suburbs are representative of much of America."
So, for the state that’s picked the correct presidential candidate every election but three, what will its likely pick for Biden mean for the rest of the U.S.? It is, of course, too early to say.
Check out White House Patch for the latest on the presidential election.
But, according to the NPR analysis, the U.S. should pay more attention to how Illinois votes.
"[Illinois] ... may not be a swing state," Frey told NPR, "but in terms of its demographics, I think people would do well to look at how the voting goes there to get a better understanding of what's going on in the country as a whole."
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