State GOP analysis of election data highlights Republican weaknesses in suburbs

Internal divisions among Illinois Republicans were laid bare earlier this month when a group of far-right downstate GOP lawmakers aligned with Darren Bailey’s failed gubernatorial bid chastised suburban Republicans for not doing enough for the party.

“Devoid of evidence or data, (the party’s left flank) are declaring that conservatives are to blame for the GOP’s losses in November,” four lawmakers who make up what’s informally known as the “Eastern Bloc” of House Republicans wrote in a Dec. 14 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune.

The legislators argued suburban Republicans were the ones to blame for losses in both state and local elections, part of a trend they said predates former President Donald Trump.

“Contrast that with downstate, where we worked hard to flip our counties from reliably blue to ruby red,” the op-ed said. “Perhaps suburban Republicans should be doing more self-reflection on how they have lost the support of their voters over the same time period.”

The opinions offered by state Reps. Chris Miller of Oakland, Blaine Wilhour of Beecher City, Dan Caulkins of Decatur and Brad Halbrook of Shelbyville ignored one key factor in their party’s success downstate — the loss of union and manufacturing jobs held by workers who traditionally backed conservative Democrats.

Their interpretation also runs counter to data from a state GOP analysis of the November general election results. Without stating it directly, the analysis pointed to a lack of campaign cash and the quality and ideology of the party’s candidates — particularly for suburban voters — as key factors contributing to GOP defeats in statewide and regional races.

Statewide, Bailey, a state senator from downstate Xenia who was backed by Trump and ran a socially conservative campaign rooted in his evangelical Christianity, received nearly 27,000 fewer votes than one-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner collected in his 2018 loss to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Rauner had alienated many conservative Republicans represented by the Eastern Bloc legislators by signing a measure expanding taxpayer-subsidized abortions and taking positions they opposed on gay rights and other social issues.

In their op-ed, the four Republicans decried calls for a return to the fiscally conservative, socially moderate stance that has traditionally proved successful for GOP statewide candidates.

“We have already been down this road,” the lawmakers wrote, citing Rauner as an example.

The state GOP analysis showed Bailey bested Rauner’s 2018 showing by more than 112,000 votes in downstate media markets, including Rockford, the Quad Cities, Peoria, Bloomington, Springfield, Quincy, St. Louis and Harrisburg.

But the analysis noted those media markets cover only about 30% of Illinois voters.

In the costly and far larger Chicago media market, which covers nearly 70% of the state’s voters, the script was flipped — Rauner in 2018 outperformed Bailey’s November showing by more than 140,000 votes, the analysis found. In addition to Cook and the collar counties, the market includes the exurban counties of DeKalb, Grundy, Kendall, Kankakee and LaSalle.

Those results point to the success of Pritzker’s strategy to drive negative advertising against an underfunded opponent, with a focus on Bailey’s opposition to abortion without exceptions. That position is anathema to many socially moderate suburban women, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion rights to the states.

Looking more closely at county results by voting population, the state GOP analysis found that in Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will and Kane counties, Bailey fell short of Rauner’s 2018 vote total by more than 145,000 votes.

Where Bailey excelled was in the roughly 74 of Illinois’ 102 counties with a voting population of 50,000 or fewer people. Bailey surpassed Rauner’s 2018 totals in the state’s smallest downstate counties by about 90,000 votes, the analysis found.

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The analysis also points to Bailey’s role as head of the party’s ticket in GOP down-ballot losses.

Results from DuPage County, once the center of suburban Republicanism, were especially telling. Bailey lost to Pritzker by more than 51,000 votes in DuPage, and GOP challengers in several congressional districts lost to Democratic incumbents by a total of more than 45,000 votes.

In a Supreme Court race, Republican Justice Mike Burke of Elmhurst, which is in DuPage, lost the county to Democrat Mary Kay O’Brien of Essex by nearly 32,000 votes.

Gwen Henry, a former Wheaton mayor who has been DuPage County treasurer since 2006, was a rare GOP bright spot, winning reelection by more than 11,000 votes. But former state Rep. Deb Conroy of Villa Park became the first woman in history and first Democrat in 75 years to win the race for county board chair.

The results in DuPage, the state party analysis said, proved that “not all Republican voters voted for all Republican candidates.”

The analysis was presented to Republicans in early December at a postelection meeting of the state Republican Central Committee attended by more than 100 political activists and rural grassroots supporters, most of whom contended the state GOP did not do enough to help Bailey.

Some activists accused GOP leaders of using the data presentation as a stall tactic to keep them from voicing their frustration in a public comment period.

At the session, state GOP Chair Don Tracy said the data reflected the need for the party to put a newfound emphasis on recapturing the suburbs, but he offered no game plan.

In their op-ed, the four “Eastern Bloc” lawmakers said they were not contending “that conservatives should be held harmless for the election debacle this year” and that “electability, capability and political talent are also essential ingredients to be politically successful in Illinois.”

But they also wrote that “the base of our party is tired of being ignored.”

“We need an actual message,” the lawmakers said.

For Republicans to be successful, however, the data indicates any message must play to a suburban voting population whose diversity, ideology and values are increasingly at odds with the declining rural populations the four legislators represent.

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