I think eventually the population of Illinois outside of Cook county and the collar counties will eventually overtake that of Cook and the collar counties. Once this happens, I think we'll start seeing Illinois trend Republican. By the way, I don't think this happening anytime soon but I do think it will eventually occur.
Chicagoland has the rest of the state doubled on population right now. There's no chance the rest of the state overtakes Chicagoland in our lifetimes. There's simply nothing to attract enough people to the rest of the state, and there's too many businesses in Chicago for it to bottom out. Even in the last few years we've seen ADM and Caterpillar relocate from downstate to Chicago.
