Idea: Illinois as first-primary state

[RINO Tom]

FTR, if Illinois were actually a crucial primary with several candidates, I think the campaigning would be a LOT more spread out than people realize.  These are 2016 numbers, as I have not updated my spreadsheet in a while:

ILLINOIS: 12,801,539
Chicagoland: 8,488,857 (66.31%)
Chicago: 2,704,958
Instate Suburbs: 5,783,899 (2,498,541 and 3,285,358 in the other counties)
Downstate Illinois: 4,312,682 (33.69%)
- Northern IL: 1,182,137 (46.46% in Rockford/Quad Cities)
- Central IL: 1,921,129 (52.75% in Peoria/Bloomington/Champaign/Springfield)
- Southern IL: 1,209,416 (49.64% in St. Louis suburbs)

As you can see, more people actually live in Downstate than some might assume, and more of those people in Downstate live in decidedly NON-rural areas.  I think it would be an interesting primary, and I absolutely do NOT think it would evolve into some "Chicagoland vs. Downstate" battle whatsoever.  Rockford and Peoria have industrial, minority-heavy city centers with fairly affluent surrounding areas that are more Republican, while somewhere like Springfield has more culturally conservative areas surrounding a "pro-government"-type Democratic center and then you have somewhere like Champaign that is a more "college town liberal vibe."

There would obviously be a candidate playing all-in on Chicago and one playing all-in rural Downstate voters, but neither one would win on that support alone.

[RINO Tom]

^ In many ways, yes (especially for a Democratic candidate focusing intensely on Chicago and/or Cook County), but a huge chunk of Illinois' Republican votes still come from the Chicago area.  I would imagine a GOP primary in Illinois (of this much importance/scope) going something like this:

- A "moderate" or "business wing" candidate who focuses mainly on the Chicagoland suburbs and fundraising in other semi-large population centers with traditionally Republican voters like Peoria, Rockford, Bloomington, etc.
- A "true conservative" who looks to drive up turnout in rural Northern IL, much of Central IL, more ancestrally GOP areas of Southern IL and the outer Chicagoland suburbs.
- A "Trumpist" candidate who looks to win "WWC" voters in ancestrally Democratic areas of Southern IL, the larger small city centers/manufacturing areas like Peoria/Rockford/Quad Cities/some STL suburbs/etc. and also looks to get a "surprising" number of votes out of "WWC" areas of Cook County.
- Several other candidates doing a combination of these.

Any candidate that could have some crossover appeal between those would win.  Whether that's a "business wing" Republican who can also appeal to "true conservative" types due to a stance or two (ala Romney 2012) or a "Trumpist" candidate that captures the frustrations of the moment to also appeal to other Republican groups across many demographics (ala Trump 2016) or a more generic Tea Partyer type who can channel anger at "The Establishment" to combine all of the other groups together like [take your pick of random, crazy 2010-2014 Republican], I do not know.