Steve Neal breaks down the suburban Cook vote and it is pretty interesting. G-Rod and Madigan both won the suburbs, but lost a majority of townships. By winning the southwestern ones big, they took the County by decent margins. The northwestern areas such as Palatine went Republican, but by relatively small margins. Frankly, the Republicans can have Palatine as long as I never have to return there.
In context of the Emerging Democratic Majority, these results fit pretty well. Evanston-an ideopolis if ever there was one went heavily Democratic and the southwestern Cook areas did as well. Those southwestern are less white than the rest of the burbs. Most interesting is that the northwestern county is damn near competitive-something new.The city was solid except for 41. Madigan faced a bit less support on the Gold Coast and in the other northwestern wards, but still had a commanding win in the city.
In DuPage, J-Ry and Birkett took 2/3 of the vote, but didn’t rack up huge margins in the other collar counties as they should have been able to do. Even worse, it is unlikely for the Republicans to have two DuPage countians on the ticket from here on out, making the future races even more difficult. While DuPage isn’t going to be voting Democratic anytime soon, the trend there is towards competitiveness.
Finally, in the "he is a smarter pundit than I am" category, Neal addressed Maria Pappas’ run for Senate and is far more positive than I was. Read it and then ignore everything I said.
I’m still not sure how well she can do against Moseley-Braun unless Daley, Madigan, Hynes (the elder), or G-Rod/Mell get behind her. Only Daley is firmly committed from what we hear so she still has a shot at two of them with Hynes obviously pulling for his son if he gets in to the race. My sense is Hynes will pull Madigan with him and G-Rod/Mell will choose between Daley’s choice-Blair, or Hynes.
Even despite that, Pappas isn’t as weak as I quickly dismissed her the other day. With Moseley-Braun’s record of sleaziness, female voters will be looking for someone to support. If she can attract some union support (more independent on endorsements in the primary than you would guess) she’d be in a position to do okay. However, with the match-ups coming she is going to have a hard time to get a plurality. 25% of the vote is locked up by Moseley-Braun with African-Americans. Obama might pull up to a 1/5 of that, but then Moseley-Braun starts out at 20%. Hynes has 20% locked up simply by connections and Blair probably 20% assuming no major blunders. Chico gets a baseline of 15-20% with Latino voters. That doesn’t leave a lot unless she can cut a deal, or break into someone’s votes. She may be able to pull votes from Chico and Hull the easiest.
Given the cluttered field it is hard to say what will occur. However, for Moseley-Braun not to be the frontrunner, Obama has to stay in. If he doesn’t the race becomes much harder for everyone else.
Then again, Moseley-Braun will probably have a campaign finance scandal that might tank her support.