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DuPage County, Illinois, one of the collar counties of Chicago, had voted Republican since the beginning of the GOP in 1856. That changed with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Instead of reverting to the GOP when Obama wasn’t on the ballot, it’s been trending more and more to the Democrats ever since.
DuPage was the county where Chris Ladd of the GOPLifer blog and later the Political Orphans blog was a Republican official until he resigned in 2016 with the nomination of Donald Trump.
Quote:
National Republicans don’t appear to care about losing their former strongholds in places like Orange County, the Chicago collar counties, and Philadelphia’s Main Line communities. They ignored the warnings from their own 2012 “Autopsy” report, instead choosing to double down on even more explicitly white nationalist rhetoric and partnerships. Local Republicans seem blissfully unaware of the tides pulling them out to sea. DuPage Republicans have opted for silence and patience, missing their chance to rebrand themselves in opposition to an increasingly unpopular national party.
It’s likely that the decline of GOP power in DuPage will continue. The party’s core will continue to shrink into smaller and smaller pockets of the County’s oldest, wealthiest and whitest communities. A century and a half of Republican dominance in DuPage County appears to have ended.
For all the talk of the Midwest shifting to the GOP, the truth is murkier than that. The rural and small town/city Midwest is trending Republican, while the wealthy suburbs that used to epitomize the GOP and becoming more Democratic. What happened in DuPage is happening to varying degrees in the suburbs of our major cities, all in response to the new GOP of Donald Trump.
Rural = trending republican or already solidly republican
Urban and suburban = trending democratic or already solidly democratic
That's basically all you need to know.
So basically, the population as a whole is trending Democratic. They dying small towns and rural areas will continue to cling to the GOP as the party fades in relevance.
I grew up in Chicago and the collar counties have always been solidly Republican. I never thought I'd see the day when they would swing left. This president is probably the best thing that could have possibly happened for the Democratic party.
All those suburban housewives who think govt is just one big mommy, even the ones who identify as GOP'ers are pretty bad there.
Well educated suburban voters who have always been reliable Republicans rejected the GOP in large numbers in 2018. Call them names all you like, but that's a demographic the GOP cannot afford to lose.
What's left to them now, all the old-timers stuck in 20th century rural America? How long will that dying segment of the population sustain them? They are doing nothing to appeal to anyone outside that shrinking demographic. Where do future Republican voters come from?
The Illinois GOP has always been somewhat of a horse of a different color compared to the GOP generally. Democrat and Republican governors alike from Illinois have wound up in prison. Four of the past 7 Illinois governors went to prison--2 democrats, and two republicans.
The area where I live (Eastside suburbs of Seattle) is somewhat similar to DuPage. Twenty years ago it was solidly red. The longtime US rep was Jennifer Dunn, who named her kid 'Reagan.' The area is now virtually 100% blue.
There's one Poll the OP always ignores. The actual vote.
The OP actually did make mention of the vote, in fact the vote was the whole point of the OP's post. DuPage use to be a heavily Republican County, Trump lost it by 15 and it has become Democratic down ballot as well.
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