Who will win in Illinois?

[muon2]

If the election were today, I think every observer in IL recognizes that Rauner wins. Some note that Quinn overcame a summer polling and popularity deficit in 2010, but there are a number of new obstacles Quinn faces this year. Here are the three big ones I see in his attempt to erase Rauner's current lead.

1. In 2010 Brady let up the pressure late in the campaign both in terms of monetary expenditures for ads and more importantly in his ground game which never organized well in the Chicago suburbs. Quinn took advantage of that with his fall surge. Rauner shows no signs of letting up and is out spending and outorganizing Quinn at this point. Quinn has to come up with a different strategy this time.

2. Brady is a solid social conservative with a long legislative record. Quinn and allied groups took advantage of that to run a string of scary commercials in the Chicago suburbs. Fear that Brady might enact a string of socially conservative policies moved many Suburbanites away from Brady. This year Quinn is trying to scare voters with Rauner's great wealth, it's basically the only thing he and the Dems stressed at their day at the State Fair. However, the suburbs are the wealthiest area of the state and a wealthy candidate doesn't scare them like certain social ideas do. Quinn has to come up with something different to push Rauner's negatives and keep Rauner's potential voters away.

3. There were a number of high profile races in Cook county in 2010 and the Dems amped up turnout about 2% higher than most models forecast. Even with that turnout Quinn only beat Brady by less than 1% statewide. Furthermore Cohen was a wealth independent who advertised heavily and drew just under 4% of the statewide vote, mostly from voters opposed to Quinn. This year all the third-party and independent candidates are facing legal challenges to their nominating petitions and none have much money. Quinn's ceiling looks to be at about 47% from 2010, and his biggest challenge is to find a way to boost that beyond 2010 when he benefited by higher than normal turnout in Cook and third party candidate removing votes from his opposition.

[muon2]

Quinn.
As long as he does not do too poorly in rural areas, he will win just by dominating Chicago.

Dominating Chicago is not enough. Mark Kirk only got 19.47% of the vote in Chicago in 2010 to 76.72% for Alexi Giannoulias. Though Quinn only got 75.43% in Chicago in 2010, Cohen's vote held Brady to 17.41%. That gave him a 400K vote advantage there, but Giannoulias with a 394K advantage in Chicago lost to Kirk.

There's no significant third party this year. How does Quinn improve his percent from 2010 and keep Rauner from matching Kirk? If Quinn can't do that, he has to find some new pocket of votes outside of Chicago.

[muon2]

Amazing how when I looked back at all the polls from the 2010 race, Brady didn't trail in a single poll from August on and still lost.  That race was highly polled too.  Brady must have lost the late-deciders (the "come homers") 90/10 to blow that race.

It's amazing how from some of the posts within this discussion, the perception of the total incompetence of the GOP in IL

Most of the polls for the race failed to include all the candidates on the ballot. Because of that Brady was getting all the anti-Quinn vote in those polls. In reality almost 4% went to Cohen and that largely came at the expense of Brady. When there is a well-funded third party candidate in a close race, it's essential to include their name in the poll. Otherwise all one is measuring is the incumbent's strength against the field.

[muon2]

Quinn.
As long as he does not do too poorly in rural areas, he will win just by dominating Chicago.

There's no significant third party this year. How does Quinn improve his percent from 2010 and keep Rauner from matching Kirk? If Quinn can't do that, he has to find some new pocket of votes outside of Chicago.

If there are no third-party candidates on the ballot, it's not like 100% of those votes would go to Rauner; the Green candidate got ~10% in 2006 and ~3% in 2010. Plus Illinois will have same-day registration for the first time this year so turn-out could be higher than expected.

They may not go to Rauner, but they are mostly based on protest votes against Quinn. It was in protest against Blago that Whitney got 10% as a Green, in large part because Blago's ads had successfully decimated Topinka's image early in the campaign. That hasn't happened this year against Rauner. If the Greens get 3% or more its coming almost entirely from left-leaning voters protesting Quinn.

The same day registration will help Quinn, but will that do more than compensate from the high turnout for downballot Cook races that are missing this year. If it only replaces those votes it still leaves Quinn short of a win. Rauner has created a ground game that Brady lacked so he will be turning out extra voters as well. I'm just saying that Quinn has a much tougher comeback than he had 4 years ago.