Could a democrat win a statewide election in Illinois with only Cook County?

[MT Treasurer]

At this point, I think coalitions have shifted too much + demographic changes and generational turnover have upended traditional R pathways in IL to such an extent that I don’t see how any Republican can recreate Rauner's map (not just in terms of the margins, but also the county wins themselves). It’s hard to conceive such a scenario now, but the next Republican to win IL will probably break at least 35% in Cook but still lose DuPage and Lake narrowly (and likely two other counties or so as well — Rock Island and Champaign?). Chicago would likely need to lose population at a faster rate than it currently is for this to happen, though.

[MT Treasurer]

I only used Bruce Rauner's map as an example because that was the only recent race in which the Democrat ended up losing all non-Cook counties. Such a map obviously can’t be replicated at the federal level, regardless of how poorly someone like Pritzker would fare in the collar counties in 2022 (not that I think he’s particularly vulnerable — even a ‘local’ Republican wouldn’t win those counties by nearly as much as Rauner in 2014, even if the R collapse there isn’t comparable to places like NoVA/the Atlanta suburbs). My point was more that Republicans will have to improve over Rauner's 33.3% showing in Cook to win statewide again, especially at the federal level.