Chicagoland Suburbs Are Getting More Democratic

For most of American history, Illinois has been considered a bellweather state, with the conservative south, moderate middle and northern part of the state, and liberal Chicago all balancing out one another. And then, with Illinois going to Clinton in 1992 that started to change. What happened?

A trend takes more than one or two data points. And Illinois has provided numerous points. Since 1990, Democrats have won five of eight statewide top of the ballot campaigns. While that's not a convincing majority, the fashion of Democratic victories have been interesting -- it seems like more and more of the winning Democratic vote can be attributed to the suburbs.

Without a doubt, the vast majority of Illinois population growth has been driven by the suburbs. In fact, since 1990, Chicago population has been estimated by the Census to have only grown by about 80,000 people, while the suburbs have grown by a phenominal 1,000,000. Originally most of that growth was in DuPage County, going from 785,000 to 928,000 in fourteen years, but lately DuPage has started to plateau, and the growth in Lake and Will Counties has sped up.

This is an important political development, since DuPage County has long thought of itself as the center of Illinois Republicanism. The DuPage County Board has been entirely dominated by Republicans for years, and it has been the home of Congressman Henry Hyde, as well as many of the biggest Republican donors in Illinois.

Will and Lake Counties, on the other hand, have more ambiguous political leanings. Much of Lake County is dominated by Democrats, especially along the lakefront. And eastern Will County has a significant minority population, especially Democratic-leaning African-Americans.

To try to determine any trends, I gathered (with the help of Erika Beeken, from my office) county-by-county election results for the top of the ballot general elections for 1990 to 2004. All data came from the Illinois Board of Elections or the Chicago Board of Elections.

Putting all the results together into a single graph reveals an interesting trend: While the suburban share of all votes has been increasing steadily, the Democratic share of suburban votes has been increasing. Any regular observer of Illinois politics should not be surprised by these results, none-the-less it does point out a number of significant problems for Republicans in Illinois.